Black History 365: Julia Bullock

December 8, 2022

about

Julia Bullock is an American classical singer who “communicates intense, authentic feeling, as if she were singing right from her soul” (Opera News).

Black History 365: Mashama Bailey

December 7, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashama_Bailey

Mashama Bailey is an American chef trained in French technique who is currently cooking Southern cuisine. In 2019, Bailey was awarded a James Beard Award as best chef of the southeast.[1] In 2022, Bailey was awarded a James Beard Award as Outstanding Chef.[2]

Early life and education

Mashama Bailey was born to David and Catherine Bailey in the Bronx.[3] She was the eldest of three with one sister and one brother.[4] Bailey moved to Waynesboro, Georgia at the age of 2, Savannah, Georgia at 5, and then to Queens, New York when she was 11.[5] Bailey learned to cook from her mother and grandmother.[4]

After graduating from Francis Lewis High School, Bailey attended Sullivan County Community College[3] where she studied physical therapy and later switched to social work.[6] Early in her career Bailey worked at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn, New York. As the project underwent changes she was let go, an experience that became a catalyst for her to explore the culinary arts. [7] She enrolled in Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School, and after graduating began her culinary career at Aquagrill in SoHo. [7]

Bailey, interested in exploring the wider range of careers available in the culinary arts, took a break from the restaurant industry, during which time she worked as a personal chef on the Upper East Side.[8] This left some of her family concerned with the racial and class dynamics, as it seemed a return to how her grandmother migrated from Georgia to Manhattan and worked as a maid. Bailey’s grandmother worked within several households, one of the more famous being that of Art Carney. [3]

Working as a personal chef didn’t inspire Bailey as she had hoped, and during this time she applied for a work-study program that led her to Château du Fey in Burgundy, France.[4] There she was mentored by Anne Willan who advised her to continue cooking in restaurants instead of exploring a culinary writing career. [9]

Career

Bailey started her career as an intern at Aquagrill in 2001, and also worked at David Burke and Donatella, and the Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel.[10] In 2010, Bailey was hired at Prune, where she was quickly promoted to sous-chef and worked for four years.[11]

Startup entrepreneur John O. Morisano heard about Bailey through the chef and owner of Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton, and reached out to her about a long-abandoned, former Jim Crow segregated Greyhound station he’d bought in Savannah, Georgia.[12][13] Across the street from the property is the Chatham County Courthouse where Bailey’s parents were married in the 1980s.[14] The restaurant, named The Grey, was nominated for the 2015 James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant.[15]

On October 15, 2018, Morisano and Bailey opened The Grey Market in Savannah inspired by Southern lunch counters and New York City bodegas.[16] Since 2017, Bailey has served as chairwoman of the Edna Lewis Foundation, which works to “revive, preserve, and celebrate the rich history of African-American cookery by cultivating a deeper understanding of Southern food and culture in America.”[11][17]

Awards

  • The Grey was named one of Food & Wine‘s best restaurants of 2019.[18]
  • Winner of the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southeast in 2019.[1]
  • In 2018, she was nominated for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the Southeast.[19]
  • The Grey was one of Food & Wine‘s best restaurants of 2015.[20]
  • The Grey was the 2017 Restaurant of the Year from Eater[21]
  • The Grey was chosen as one of the best 100 places in the world by Time in 2018.[12]
  • Winner James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef in 2022. [2]

Television

She was a featured chef in the sixth season of Netflix‘s Chef’s Table and was a guest on season 14, episode 6 of Top Chef.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashama_Bailey

Black History 365: Stromae

December 6, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromae

Paul Van Haver (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpɔu̯l vɑn ˈɦaːvər]; born 12 March 1985), better known by his stage name Stromae (French pronunciation: ​[stʁɔmaj][1]), is a Belgian singer, rapper, songwriter and producer. He is mostly known for his works in the genre of the hip hop and electronic music. Stromae came to wide public attention in 2009 with his song “Alors on danse” (from the album Cheese), which became a number one in several European countries. In 2013, his second album Racine carrée was a commercial success, selling 2 million copies in France.[2] The main singles from the album include “Papaoutai” and “Formidable“.

Early life

Paul Van Haver was born in Brussels and raised in the city’s Laken district, to a Rwandan Tutsi father, Pierre Rutare, and a Flemish mother, Miranda Van Haver.[3][4] He also revealed in an interview that he has Somali heritage from his father’s side.[5] He and his siblings were raised by their mother, as his father, an architect, was killed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, while visiting his family.[3][6] He attended the Sacré-coeur de Jette, a Jesuit school in Jette, the Collège Saint-Paul in Godinne, after failing in the public school system at the age of sixteen.[6] He formed a small rap group with his friends while still in school. His early influences included Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, Cuban son, and Congolese rumba.[7]

Career

2000–2007: Early career

In 2000, he appeared as a rapper called Opmaestro, though he later changed his stage name to “Stromae”, which is “Maestro” with the syllables reversed following the French slang practice, verlan.[6]

At the age of 18, he founded a rap group called “Suspicion”, along with rapper “J.E.D.I.” in Eichhof. They produced the song and music video “Faut que t’arrête le Rap…” before J.E.D.I. decided to leave the rap duo. To finance his private school education, Van Haver worked part-time in the hospitality industry, but his academic performance wasn’t up to standard.[citation needed] It was only later, when he registered at the Institut national de radioélectricité et cinématographie, that he released his first EP “Juste un cerveau, un flow, un fond et un mic…”.[citation needed]

2007–2008: Debut EP and record career

In 2007, during his studies at the film school of Brussels, Stromae decided to concentrate fully on his musical career. This resulted in his debut-EP “Juste un cerveau, un flow, un fond et un mic…”. In 2008 he signed a 4-year record deal with “Because Music” and ‘Kilomaître’.[citation needed]

2008–2012: Breakthrough and international success

In 2008, Stromae worked as a young trainee at the music radio station NRJ in Brussels. Vincent Verbelen, Music Manager, was impressed by the talent he perceived in Stromae’s first single “Alors on danse” and decided to air it for the first time on NRJ. The response from listeners (including influential personalities ranging from Anna Wintour and Jean-Claude Van Damme, to the then-president of France Nicolas Sarkozy)[citation needed] was one of extreme enthusiasm and Stromae came to wider public attention. In a few weeks from that point, sales of the song established it as number one in Belgium.[citation needed]

Vertigo Records, a label of Mercury Records France (Universal Music Group), signed him for a worldwide licensing deal soon after this.[citation needed]

By May 2010 the track “Alors on danse” had reached number one in Belgium, France, Sweden, Greece, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Romania, and the Czech Republic.[citation needed]

On 2 September, Stromae collaborated with Kanye West and Gilbere Forte in a remix of his hit “Alors on danse”.[8] In 2010, he was nominated for Best Dutch and Belgian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards.[citation needed]

Of his music and influences, he has said: “I was in a little group doing rap music. I thought that rather than copying the French sound, I’d focus on a more American style but give it a European spin. And then I rediscovered the 90s Eurodance. For a long time we were ashamed of that sound but in fact, there’s a lot to discover. It has its roots in everything from house to salsa. I also really admire Jacques Brel – he has been a huge influence on me – but also all sorts of other stuff, Cuban son, and the Congolese rumba, that I heard as a child; that music rocked the whole of Africa.” Also, Stromae insists he wanted to collaborate with up and coming rap group Swag+5 featuring rapper T-Jay. In the end, the collaboration did not take place, but Stromae is a big fan of the America-based group.[9] The critic Molloy Woodcraft: “He combines 90s electro synths and beats with a laidback delivery to the mesmeric effect”.[citation needed]

He is one of the ten winners of the European Border Breakers Award 2011. On 9 February 2011, his debut album Cheese (including the hit single “Alors on danse”) won the award for Best Dance Album at the Victoires de la musique.[citation needed]

On 23 May 2011, during the recording of the French TV show Taratata, Stromae did a mashup of “Alors on danse” and “Don’t Stop the Party” with the Black Eyed Peas. Stromae also announced he would perform as the opening support act for the first of two concerts by the band in Paris on 24 and 25 June 2011 at Stade De France.[10] Stromae had previously met will.i.am at the NRJ Music Awards in January. will.i.am told him that he liked “Alors on danse” and said he wanted to collaborate with Stromae.[citation needed]

In 2011, he received one nomination for Best Belgian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards.[11]

2013–2017: Racine carrée

The first single “Papaoutai” from his second album Racine carrée (Square root) was digitally released on 13 May 2013. It went on to chart number 1 in Belgium and France, number 2 in the Netherlands, as well as number 7 in Germany and Switzerland.[citation needed]

On 22 May 2013, amateur-looking videos appeared on YouTube showing Stromae, apparently drunk and wandering at the Louiza tram station in Brussels at dawn.[12] The videos went viral. A few days later, it was revealed that this was linked with the filming of a professional music video. This was confirmed during an appearance by Stromae on the French TV show Ce soir ou jamais in which he discussed and also performed his new single “Formidable“, which is about the story of a drunk man just separated from his girlfriend. The music video was made from edited hidden-camera footage taken on 22 May. It also shows people taking pictures with their cellphones, people who are clearly irritated by his drunk actions, people helping him stand up, and three policemen asking if the artist was okay or if he needed some help.[13][14] The policemen also got some critiques for not disciplining the drunk Stromae; however, they later claimed that the full story hadn’t been shown. The part where they returned and Stromae had to explain his case was not broadcast.[15]

On 26 July 2013, Stromae announced on his Facebook[16] and Twitter[17] accounts that he had completed his second studio album Racine carrée or √ and that it would be released on 16 August 2013. On 25 August 2013, Stromae joined Major Lazer‘s show at French festival Rock en Seine, where he performed “Papaoutai”. In September 2013, Belgian rock band Mintzkov covered his song “Formidable” for a live session on Studio Brussel, with lyrics in English. In November 2013, Stromae received the award for Best Belgian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards.[18][19]

On 22 February 2014, he performed his song “Formidable” as a guest at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy.[20]

On 17 March 2014, it was made public that Stromae’s song “Ta fête” would become the official song for the Belgian national football team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.[21]

In June 2014, in support of Racine carrée, Stromae made his US television debut on NBC‘s Late Night with Seth Meyers.[22] He then embarked on a tour across the United States and performed at the Best Buy Theater in New York City.[23][24] While in New York, on 22 June 2014, Stromae guest starred in a Snapchat story with Jérôme Jarre as The Carrot’s Father.[25]

On 21 October 2014, it was revealed that New Zealand singer Lorde invited Stromae to work on the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 along with artists like Kanye West, Grace Jones, Diplo and The Chemical Brothers.[30] He contributed to the song “Meltdown” which also features Pusha T, Q-Tip, Haim and Lorde herself.[31] The singer had declared herself a fan of Stromae after attending his concert earlier that month.[32] In March 2015, Stromae released a music video for the song “Carmen“, which was directed by Sylvain Chomet. The video warns people against the addictive qualities of social media apps such as Twitter.[33]

Stromae continued touring the United States, performing in March 2015 in several places including the SXSW in Austin, Texas.[34] He was also among the line-up of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.[35][36] He then began a tour in Africa on 13 May. However, in mid-June Stromae was forced to cancel the remaining of his shows until 2 August for health reasons.[37] He performed at Madison Square Garden in October, becoming the first exclusively French-singing performer to sell out that venue.[38][39]

On 14 September 2015, Stromae released a single “Quand c’est?”, a song about cancer, which plays on the fact that “Quand c’est?” (When is it?) and “cancer” are phonetically similar in French.[40]

2018–present: New work and Multitude

On 6 April 2018, Stromae released his first single in more than three years, “Défiler”, to accompany the release of “Capsule 5” a new fashion line.[41][42][43] The song was co-composed with his brother, Luc Junior Tam.[44] The song’s lyrics play on the meanings in the French language of the words “défiler” (“to parade/pass by,” often used to refer to models walking down a runway), “fil” (thread, line) and “filer” (to whiz by), evoking themes of modeling and superficiality; of life speeding by; and of toeing the line or hanging by a thread.[45]

In 2019, he co-produced and provided vocals, in French, for the song “Arabesque” of the band Coldplay, for their album Everyday Life.[46]

On 10 November 2020, during his first Live Instagram on the occasion of Mosaert’s 10th anniversary, he mentioned working on new music. Finally, on 15 October 2021 his first single in 3 years, named “Santé“, was released. When asked during a 2022 interview whether Santé is about workers during the COVID-19 pandemic he said, “No, not exactly.” Stromae explained that he wrote the song about Rosa, the woman who cleans his house, and that the song is about celebrating people who “are just working while we are partying”.[47] It is also now identified by a dance Stromae made up specifically for the song, which can be seen in the music video.[48] On 8 December 2021, he announced that his third studio album “Multitude” would be released on 4 March 2022.[49]

On 9 January 2022, he unveiled a second single from the album, “L’enfer“, by performing it live during the 8 pm TV news on TF1.[50]

Collaborations

In 2009, Stromae collaborated with Kery James on the song “Ghetto”, also featuring J-mi Sissoko. The song was the subject of his “Lesson Number 14” series on YouTube.[51]

In 2010, Stromae’s song “Alors on danse” was remixed by Kanye West. West and Stromae also performed the remix live at Coachella in 2015.[52]

Stromae collaborated with Lorde, Haim, Pusha T, and Q-Tip for the song “Meltdown“, which uses the instrumental of his song “Merci”, a track originally recorded for his 2014 album Racine carrée. The track was featured on the soundtrack for the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.[53]

Stromae collaborated with director Henry Scholfield to produce the music video for English artist Dua Lipa’s single “IDGAF“. The video was released on 12 January 2018.[54]

Stromae provided vocals for Coldplay‘s 2019 single “Arabesque” on their eighth studio album Everyday Life.[55]

Stromae also collaborated with French rapper Orelsan on a song called “La pluie“.[56]

Stromae collaborated with Camila Cabello in the music video for “Mon Amour” where she contributed vocals in English and French for the video version in 2022.[57]

Other ventures

Stromae as a Maestro

The name “Stromae” comes from switching the syllables in the word “maestro”.[58] This inversion is a result of French slang[59] known as verlan.[60]

Van Haver has produced a number of videos described as leçons, or lessons, released on YouTube.

Leçon 21 is entitled Silence,[61] leçon 24 is entitled les leçons c’est “tous les mêmes,” and is delivered by Stromae on a gondola in Venice.[62] Leçon 28 is entitled “ta fête” (hymne red devils),[63] and features the National football team of Belgium.[64]

Fashion

Stromae is known for his distinctive physique and clothing style. He has used this image in launching a limited fashion line, Mosaert (an anagram of his stage name). The collection features bright colors and geometric patterns, and has been described as “hipster” and “retro kitsch”. Stromae has said that he wanted to “create a bridge between British style and African aesthetic”.[65]

The first collection was a success, with stocks almost sold out after three days.[66] The second collection, Capsule No. 2, was released at Colette in Paris on 3 December 2014, and features the square root design on each item in different colors.[67][68] Capsule No. 3 was released on 7 April 2016, a music track was released on 31 March 2017 to promote the line.[69] The new designs are the first to use patterns not previously worn by Stromae, reflecting Mosaert’s intention to gradually move into a separate stylistic identity for the clothing line.[70][71]

On 6 April 2018, Mosaert presented a fashion show at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris to mark the release of its latest collection, “Capsule n°5”, which was accompanied by the release of Stromae’s first new single in more than five years, “Défiler”.[42]

Personal life

In 2015 he had to cancel a tour through Africa because of anxiety caused by the malaria medicine Lariam (Mefloquine). Since then Stromae had avoided public appearances. In an interview in 2017, he stated that he still suffers from panic attacks and initially left open whether he would ever be able to make music professionally again.[72] Since 2018 he has been showing himself in public again.[73]

On 12 December 2015, Van Haver was secretly married to Coralie Barbier by well-known Catholic priest Guy Gilbert, in a private ceremony held in Mechelen.[74] His first son was born on 23 September 2018.[75]

Musical style

Stromae’s music is heavily influenced by electronic music, especially Belgian New Beat music.[76] He has been touted as the “face of the New Beat generation”.[77] He also considers Congolese music to be a huge influence.[citation needed]

Stromae has been compared to Jacques Brel, who in turn significantly influenced Stromae, with Stromae even covering several of his songs.[78]

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Stromae

Discography

Main articles: Stromae discography and list of songs recorded

Studio albums

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromae

Black History 365: Double Dutch

December 5, 2022

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/04/1140504217/double-dutch-fantastic-four-holiday-classic

How the Fantastic Four took Double Dutch to new heights

December 4, 20222:01 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Allyson McCabe

Dutch settlers may have brought Double Dutch to America, but it was Black girls who put it on the map, says Lauren Walker, president of the National Double Dutch League. “Double Dutch is Black girl magic. It came from a union of young girls in their community getting together to socialize, and to engage in each other’s dreams and ambitions.”

They also put their own spins on popular rhyming songs, like “Miss Mary Mack,” and brought them into the ropes, says ethnomusicologist Kyra D. Gaunt. “You learned from your elder siblings, you learned from your same-age peer age group, in schools, hanging out on the stoop, on the sidewalk.”

Then in 1973 two New York City policemen, Ulysses Williams and Lauren Walker’s father David A. Walker, established Double Dutch as a team sport and got it into schools. When the first tournament was held a year later, nearly 600 kids participated. Many more were inspired.

Adrienne “Nikki” Adams Howell, Delores Brown Finlayson, De’Shone Adams Goodson, and Robin Oakes Watterson met as junior high schoolers on the Lower East Side in 1978. Howell says they meshed immediately. “Everyone had their own creative ideas and everyone had their own different strengths, you know, everything came together for us.”

Calling themselves “The Added Touch,” the team placed second in the singles division and third in doubles at the 1978 World Wide Double Dutch championship. Then they took it higher, says Watterson. “I would like to say we reinvented ourselves. It’s like ‘We’re the Fantastic Four!’ We changed our name, changed our attitude. And we brought it.”

In 1980 the Fantastic Four became the Double Dutch World Champions, leading to appearances in McDonald’s commercials, a spotlight in the Emmy-award-winning 1981 documentary Pick Up Your Feet, and invitations to demonstrate Double Dutch at schools across the country. Goodson remembers being rushed by young fans back home in New York and realizing that her team was representing more than just the sport. “I remember them knocking us down to the ground actually, you know, with hugs and they showed so much love.”

As the team’s star rose, so did the profile of Double Dutch. In 1981, Frankie Smith released the hit song “Double Dutch Bus.” In 1982, the Fantastic Four were tapped to perform at The Roxy alongside DJs, MCs, graffiti artists, and B-boys- leading to the team’s participation in the New York City Rap Tour, which introduced hip-hop to audiences in Europe.

A photograph of the Fantastic Four taken on the tour by Janette Beckman has circulated widely, for example appearing on a book cover and in an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. However, the Fantastic Four were identified on the tour bill as “the Double Dutch girls” and the photo has often been interpreted merely as an expression of friendship.

These erasures were consequential, says Gaunt, adding that today many people don’t know that Double Dutch was an integral part of hip-hop culture and history. “What’s missing and the reason why people don’t know it is that that narrative is not perpetuated by most of the men who tell the story of hip-hop.” (A notable exception is KRS-One).

And yet the ties between hip-hop and Double Dutch were never completely severed. For example, you can spot them in Nelly’s 2000 debut single “Country Grammar,” which borrows from the hand-clapping game “Down Down Baby,” a 2011 ad for Jay-Z’s Rocawear, and songs by Missy Elliott, including 2002’s “Gossip Folks,” which samples Frankie Smith’s “Double Dutch Bus,” and 2019’s “Throw it Back,” whose music video features a scene where Elliot’s braids double as jump ropes.

In early 2023, the Cartoon Network animated series Craig of the Creek will air a Double Dutch-themed episode co-written by Ashleigh Hairston. “My dad is a pastor in Seattle, Washington, and I grew up playing Double Dutch in the parking lot with my friends and we would just go for hours and hours,” she says. “And I was really excited to bring those experiences into the episode.”

When Craig’s friend is accused of slacking by her hyper-competitive Double Dutch teammates, he challenges them to a “jump off” even though he has no idea how to jump. Unbeknownst to Craig, his mother was once a Double Double champion- until she was bested by a rival, Carla Frazier, who is voiced by Missy Elliott.

Revisiting that memory empowers Craig’s mom to reframe it, and inspire the kids to jump for joy. As for the real-life champions, the Fantastic Four went on to college, families, and careers, and stayed involved as coaches and officiators. They were on hand this year to serve as judges for the 31st David A. Walker Memorial Double Dutch Holiday Classic at the Apollo Theater, paying forward what Double Dutch gave them. “Structure, discipline, working with others,” says Delores Brown Finlayson. Then Nikki Howell jumps in, “These are my sisters for life.”

Black History 365: Gloria Jean Lowe

December 4, 2022

https://www.wewantgreentoo.org/board

FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, We Want Green Too

Ms. Lowe is an Interior Construction Designer with over 18 years of Construction Management experience and training throughout Detroit. Ms. Lowe’s knowledge and skill sets the foundation of WWG2 to assist Veterans with intellectual disabilities and help them transform their lives and communities, one soul, one house at a time, moving from energy poverty to energy democracy. 

Black History 365: Shemekia Copeland

December 2, 2022

From www.rockandbluesmuse.com

https://www.rockandbluesmuse.com/2022/12/01/interview-shemekia-copeland/?fbclid=IwAR0Nyqy4-OznAeG4H7N5VNJFyeAQoMpQ42jXImaPfb0GQ6GAwHCC3Co5xX4

Interview with Shemekia Copeland

By Martine Ehrenclou

Multi award-winner, four-time Grammy nominee Shemekia Copeland is considered one of the great blues and Americana vocalists of our time.

The daughter of the legendary bluesman Johnny Clyde Copeland, Shemekia Copeland made her debut at The Cotton Club at the age of 10. When she turned 16, her father took her on tour as his opening act. Her debut 1998 album Turn The Heat Up on Alligator Records, kicked off an impressive career.

Ten albums and eight Blues Music Awards later, Copeland has been praised by The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, NPR Music, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, among others. She has appeared in films, on national television, and has performed with Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Dr. John, James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr. and others, including a performance at The White House for President and Mrs. Obama. She continues to host her popular blues radio show on SiriusXM’s Bluesville.

Copeland’s new album, the Grammy nominated Done Come Too Far out on Alligator Records, features guests Sonny Landreth, Cedric Burnside, Charles Hodges, Kenny Brown, Oliver Wood, Pat Sansone and Aaron Lee Tasjan and is produced by Will Kimbrough. The songs were written by Kimbrough and John Hahn.

After congratulating Shemekia on Done Come Too Far and sharing my enthusiasm and appreciation for the album, I said, “You must be excited about the Grammy nomination. You’ve been nominated several times before, but this album feels pretty special.”

Shemekia said, “I’m very excited and this is a special album. I’m really surprised sometimes when you tell your whole truth, when people actually get it, take it in and accept it. I love it, I mean this album is all of my personality, the good, bad and the ugly, right? It’s all in there.” (Laughs)

Laughing, I asked her what it felt like baring it all like that.

“It felt great. I mean, it’s who I am,” she said. “I’ve got my serious side. I’ve got my very funny side. Everything is there in this record and that’s what I love about it. It’s how I feel about what’s going on in the world. It makes me really proud and it makes me proud to not be afraid to put it that out there like that.”

Continuing, Shemekia added, “This has been a journey for me. I started doing this since I was a kid. In the earlier part of my career, you find me talking about the social injustice. You find me talking about religious hypocrites, rape, domestic violence. I’ve always touched on issues in a particular way, so I’ve never been afraid to do that. But these last three albums are really special because it all started with having my little guy who’s almost six now, and wanting to make records that he would be proud of and say, ‘My momma is brave. My mom said this when it wasn’t popular.”

There’s deep soulfulness combined with unflinching bluntness in Done Come Too Far, funny and lighthearted tunes too. Her powerhouse vocals and the record’s top-tier musicianship and songwriting make for a compelling mix. Shemekia speaks with the same honesty and confidence that comes through in her singing. Throughout our conversation, her devotion to her young son was apparent.

“When I had him, I wanted the world to be better for him,” she said.

From America’s Child (2018) and Uncivil War (2020) to Done Come Too Far, the trilogy ignited a spark for Shemekia, a commitment to incite change, to inform, and to reflect some of society’s ills in her music. Not political, she claims to mirror what’s going on in the world.

About her decision to record another album that addressed society’s problems, something she hadn’t planned on, Shemekia said, “Then, of course, we all know what happened in 2020. I mean, It was like, what the hell? (Laughs) 2020 was a whole mess. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I guess we’re just going to have to keep on with this.’ (Laughs) And this album, I don’t want to use the word dark because it’s not dark necessarily, but I think it’s the darkest of the three. Because of all the things that happened in 2020 that needed to get touched on. You know what I mean?”

“I do. Your songs and your voice, your delivery, reflect the hard truths about what’s happening in our country. Lighthearted things too. There’s a couple songs on the album that made me laugh. How do you decide which topics to sing about and which go on your record? Is it just what moves you the most in the moment?”

“For me,” Shemekia said, “I feel like in order for blues music to evolve and grow, and to be contemporary, you have to talk current events, current issues and things that people can relate to. I try to do some of that. But I also really love history. On these last records, I’ve been touching on historical things and that makes me happy. For whatever reason, people don’t want to learn about their history. And I’ve always been taught when you know better, you do better. Right? We don’t want history to repeat itself.”

She added, “That’s why we should know about it. That’s why I wanted to do ‘Clotilda’ on the last record. And on this record, we talk about the Gullah people (“Gullah Geechee” a percussive, raw song about slavery with a gospel flavor). Our America’s so rich in culture, it’s pretty amazing. But a lot of people don’t know about it. When I find out about it, I’m like, “Oh, I got to put this out. So everyone can know about it.”

I asked, “Have you always used your voice to speak the truth and break down barriers? Have you always been a courageous person?”

“I have,” Shemekia shared. “From the very beginning I’ve always talked about women’s rights and social injustice and things of that nature, religious hypocrites. I’ve always used my voice in that way. But I think these last three albums, I’ve done so much more of that.”

I asked her about her song “The Talk,” a moving, edgy blues track about the conversations women of color have with their sons about how to behave if stopped by the police. Shemekia sings, “Words no mama wants to say, But I don’t wanna lose you someday, It’s as cruel as life can get, When a child looks like a threat, If you’re walking down the street, Or drivin’ in your car, When you get stopped, Remember who you are, And if your nerves start to crack, Whatever you do don’t talk back.”

As a singer, Copeland puts those thoughts into the heartbreaking ballad, singing with deep emotion. I asked if she’d had this talk or was planning to have it with her son.

As we talked by phone, Shemekia was packing up for her trip to Arizona to do her last gig of the year. She said, “I’ve been doing that. His whole life, I’ve been telling him that discipline’s going to save your life one day. Knowing what to say. Knowing what to do when you’re pulled over, knowing how to speak to people.”

She shared that she has a deep respect for law enforcement and talks to her son about the fact that the police are out there risking their lives every day to keep us all safe. But as with anything, she states, “There’s some good and there’s some bad. You just want to hopefully always be in a position where you run into the good ones. He has to be aware, has to understand how he needs to act.” And adds, “We also teach him to be respectful to law enforcement.”

Done Come Too Far continues in that vein with songs such as “Too Far To Be Gone” which refers to Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks, slavery with the song “Gullah Geechee”, and childhood sexual abuse with “The Dolls Are Sleeping.” “Dumb It Down” addresses the dumbing down of America by way of reality TV and mass media, but with sly humor.

Copeland’s song “Pink Turns to Red”, is a bluesy rock and roll tune about gun violence and mass shootings in schools. Slide guitar adds to the power of this tune, and the visual lyrics speak of having nowhere to run, about children in school with a gunman on the loose. Since it’s such an important issue to her, to most everyone, I asked her if she had ideas about preventing gun violence.

Shemekia got right to her point. “It’s such big business. Everything in this country is fueled by money. It doesn’t matter if it’s guns, pharmaceuticals, insurance. It’s all about money. And I would say that once greed is taken out of play, we’ll be okay. Because at the end of the day, they want to make it about, oh, well, they’re buying these in the street and they’re getting them illegally. They’re getting them from somewhere.”

I asked for her thoughts on gun laws.

Shemekia replied, “Well, we have plenty of gun laws in lots of places. That’s not helping. When they want something to be done about all these things, they will do it. I was scared to send my baby to school. I almost didn’t. But then I thought about his social development.”

She added that she’s not anti-gun, that her husband is from the Midwest and grew up hunting. “My child will grow up learning about guns and respecting them and understanding how, what to do with them. It’s important to learn about these things so that when you know better, you do better. Johnny knows that this is not a toy that you should be playing with.”

“You mentioned your son Johnny. Is he named after your dad?” I asked.

Shemekia said, “Yep, and my father’s dad and his father’s dad. For John Hahn, who is his papa.”

One of the highlights on the album is the love song, “Nobody But You” by Copeland’s father, blues singer and guitarist, Johnny Copeland. I said, “You include one of your dad’s songs on each of your albums. How did you choose this one?”

“It’s kind of ironic in some way that I picked that song,” Shemekia shared. “It’s always tough to pick one of my dad’s songs. But my mom passed away on the day that this album came out and it was devastating for me. Devastating. I miss her every day. But my dad wrote that song about her, and that’s the one I chose.”

Circling back to Shemekia Copeland’s mission to make the world a better place, I asked her about a woman who came up to her at a concert and said that one of her songs about racism changed her life. I said, “That can’t be an isolated incident.”

Shemekia admitted, “Stuff like that happens to me all the time. I was doing a song called, ‘Would You Take My Blood?’ After the show, she came up to me crying and said, ‘Me and my husband have these conversations all the time at home. He says things that I don’t like. And it really upsets me. And when you did that song tonight, I felt a change, a shift. And I just want to say thank you for that, because it was so simply put that he could really wrap his head around it.’ And she was just grateful.”

Continuing, she said, “I’ve also had a woman come up to me and say, ‘I had been in an abusive relationship physically and mentally, emotionally, for a very long time. I was leaving his house one night and XRT’ (a radio station in the Chicago area) ‘played your song ‘Ain’t Going to Be Your Tattoo.’ She said, ‘After I heard that song, I never went back to him again.’ She introduced me to her new beau, and oh, my God, we were crying. It was just amazing. She said, ‘You saved my life.’”

“I always say it’s not about the masses for me,” Shemekia said. “If I could change one heart, one mind of one person, that’s enough for me. And I’m one person at a time kind of gal. And I’m good with that.”

For more information about Shemekia Copeland see her website Here 

Black History 365: Gerald “Jerry” Lawson

December 1, 2022

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/01/1140063531/google-doodle-games-jerry-lawson

Thursday December 1, 2022 interactive Google Doodle honors Jerry Lawson, a pioneer of modern gaming

Anyone who goes online Thursday December 1 can stop by the Google homepage for a special treat: A set of create-your-own video games inspired by the man who helped make interactive gaming possible.

Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, who died in 2011, would have turned 82 on Dec. 1. He led the team that developed the first home video gaming system with interchangeable cartridges, paving the way for future systems like Atari and Super Nintendo.

Lawson’s achievements were particularly notable considering he was one of very few Black engineers working in the tech industry in the 1970s. Yet, as his children told Google, “due to a crash in the video game market, our father’s story became a footnote in video-game history.”

Recent years have ushered in new efforts to recognize Lawson: He is memorialized at the World Video Game Hall of Fame in New York, and the University of Southern California created an endowment fund in his name to support underrepresented students wishing to pursue degrees in game design and computer science.

Thursday’s Google Doodle is another such effort. It features games designed by three guest artists, all of whom are people of color: Lauren Brown, Davionne Gooden and Momo Pixel.

Users first begin by maneuvering an animated Lawson through a path marked with milestones from his own life, and from there they can select more games to play. Each has its own aesthetic, aim and set of editable features — so people can build their own game, channeling the spirit of innovation that Lawson embodied.

In a Google video explaining the Doodle, Anderson Lawson said he hopes young people will be inspired by the games and the man behind them.

“When people play this Doodle, I hope they’re inspired to be imaginative,” he said. “And I hope that some little kid somewhere that looks like me and wants to get into game development, hearing about my father’s story makes them feel like they can.”

Lawson was an inspiration in the field and to his family

Gerald Lawson’s life was “all about science,” as his son put it. He tinkered with electronics starting at an early age, and built his own radio station — using recycled materials — out of his room in Jamaica, Queens.

After attending Queens College and City College of New York, Lawson drove across the country to Palo Alto, where he joined Fairchild Semiconductor — starting as an engineering consultant and working his way up to director of engineering and marketing for its video game department.

Lawson helped lead the development of the Fairchild Channel F system, the first video game system console that used interchangeable game cartridges, an eight-way digital joystick and a pause menu. It was released in 1976.

“He was creating a coin-operated video game using the Fairchild microprocessor, which later with a team of people led to the creation of the gaming cartridge and the channel F system,” Anderson Lawson said. The “F” stood for “Fun.”

In 1980 Lawson started his own company, VideoSoft, which was one of the first Black-owned video game development companies. It created software for the Atari 2600, which helped popularize the interchangeable cartridge system that Lawson’s Fairchild team created.

He continued to consult engineering and video game companies until his death at age 70.

And while Lawson may be known as the father of the video game cartridge, his kids also remember him as a dad who nurtured and inspired them.

In a 2021 conversation with StoryCorps, Karen and Anderson Lawson recalled that some of their earliest memories were playing games that their dad’s team designed — joking that they only later realized he was putting them to work as testers and bug-catchers.

“If everyone was going right, he’d figure out a good reason to go left,” said Anderson, who cites his father as the inspiration behind his own decision to pursue computer science. “That was just him. He created his own destiny.”

And now Google Doodle players can create their own destinies — or at the very least, games — in his honor.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/01/1140063531/google-doodle-games-jerry-lawson

Black History 365: Ahmad Jamal

November 30, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Jamal

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930)[1] is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. For six decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.[2]

Biography

Early life

Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930.[1] He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano.[3] Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity (“Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does,” he said in 2001)[4] and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen,[5] at which point he was recognized as a “coming great” by the pianist Art Tatum.[6] When asked about his practice habits by a critic from The New York Times, Jamal commented that, “I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time.”[7]

Beginnings

Jamal began touring with George Hudson’s Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948.[11] He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which disbanded when violinist Joe Kennedy Jr. left.[7] In 1950 he moved to Chicago[11] and performed intermittently with local musicians Von Freeman and Claude McLin, and solo at the Palm Tavern, occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day.[12]

Born to Baptist parents, Jamal discovered Islam in his early 20s. While touring in Detroit, where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s, he became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950.[11] In an interview with The New York Times a few years later, he said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to “re-establish my original name.”[13] Shortly after his conversion to Islam, he explained to The New York Times that he “says Muslim prayers five times a day and arises in time to say his first prayers at 5 am. He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition.”[14]

He made his first records in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers not to use the term “trio”): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist, at different times Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago’s Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. Hammond, a record producer who discovered the talents and enhanced the fame of musicians like Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie, also helped Jamal’s trio attract critical acclaim.[11] Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup.

At the Pershing: But Not For Me

The trio’s sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the “House Trio” at Chicago’s Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album, At the Pershing: But Not for Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal’s recording of the well known song “Poinciana” was first released on this album.

Perhaps Jamal’s most famous recording, At the Pershing, was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 1958; it brought him popularity in the late 1950s and into the 1960s jazz age. Jamal played the set with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier. The set list expressed a diverse collection of tunes, including “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” from the musical Oklahoma! and Jamal’s arrangement of the jazz standard “Poinciana“. Jazz musicians and listeners alike found inspiration in the At the Pershing recording, and Jamal’s trio was recognized as an integral new building block in the history of jazz. Evident were his unusually minimalist style and his extended vamps,[15] according to reviewer John Morthland. “If you’re looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide,” said The New York Times contributor Ben Ratliff in a review of the album.[16]

After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal’s music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his “rising fortune”.[14] In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his “growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me.”[14] Upon his return to the U.S. after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago.[17] In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal moved to New York City, where, at the age of 32, he took a three-year hiatus from his musical career.

Return to music and The Awakening

In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, he played electric piano as well; one such recording was an instrumental recording of “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song from the 1970 film MASH, which was released on a 1973 reissue of the film’s soundtrack album, replacing the original vocal version of the song by The Mash. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year’s Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from 1979 through the 1990s.[11]

Later career

In 1986, Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication.[18]

Clint Eastwood featured two recordings from Jamal’s But Not For Me album — “Music, Music, Music” and “Poinciana” — in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.

In his eighties, Jamal continued to make numerous tours and recordings, including albums such as Saturday Morning (2013),[19] the CD/DVD release Ahmad Jamal Featuring Yusef Lateef Live at L’Olympia (2014), and Marseille (2017), which features vocals in French.

Jamal is the main mentor of jazz piano virtuosa Hiromi Uehara, known as Hiromi.[20]

Style and influence

“Ahmad Jamal is one of the great Zen masters of jazz piano. He plays just what is needed and nothing more… every phrase is perfect.”

—Tom Moon, NPR musical correspondent[21]

Trained in both traditional jazz (“American classical music”, as he prefers to call it)[7] and European classical style, Ahmad Jamal has been praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined “cool jazz” – an effort to move jazz in the direction of popular music. He emphasized space and time in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the blinding speed of bebop.

Because of this style, Jamal was “often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn’t be considered seriously in any artistic sense”.[22] Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offers a very different reaction to Jamal’s music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Parker.[23] His unique musical style stemmed from many individual characteristics, including his use of orchestral effects and his ability to control the beat of songs. These stylistic choices resulted in a unique and new sound for the piano trio: “Through the use of space and changes of rhythm and tempo”, writes Crouch, “Jamal invented a group sound that had all the surprise and dynamic variation of an imaginatively ordered big band.”[24] Jamal explored the texture of riffs, timbres, and phrases rather than the quantity or speed of notes in any given improvisation. Speaking about Jamal, A. B. Spellman of the National Endowment of the Arts said: “Nobody except Thelonious Monk used space better, and nobody ever applied the artistic device of tension and release better.”[25] These (at the time) unconventional techniques that Jamal gleaned from both traditional classical and contemporary jazz musicians helped pave the way for later jazz greats like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner.[26]

Though Jamal is often overlooked by jazz critics and historians, he is frequently credited with having a great influence on Miles Davis. Davis is quoted as saying that he was impressed by Jamal’s rhythmic sense and his “concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement”.[27] Jamal characterizes what he thought Davis admired about his music as: “my discipline as opposed to my space.”[28] Jamal and Davis became friends in the 1950s, and Davis continued to support Jamal as a fellow musician, often playing versions of Jamal’s own songs (“Ahmad’s Blues”, “New Rhumba”) until he died in 1991.[27]

Jamal, speaking about his own work, says, “I like doing ballads. They’re hard to play. It takes years of living, really, to read them properly.”[29] From an early age, Jamal developed an appreciation for the lyrics of the songs he learned: “I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, ‘Why did you stop, Ben?’ He said, ‘I forgot the lyrics.'”[7] Jamal attributes the variety in his musical taste to the fact that he grew up in several eras: the big band era, the bebop years, and the electronic age.[30] He says his style evolved from drawing on the techniques and music produced in these three eras. In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show Piano Jazz. Jamal, who said he rarely plays “But Not For Me” due to its popularity since his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he has moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.[29]

In more recent years, Jamal has embraced the electronic influences affecting the genre of jazz. He has also occasionally expanded his usual small ensemble of three to include a tenor saxophone (George Coleman) and a violin. A jazz fan interviewed by Down Beat magazine about Jamal in 2010 described his development as “more aggressive and improvisational these days. The word I used to use is avant garde; that might not be right. Whatever you call it, the way he plays is the essence of what jazz is.”[31]

Saxophonist Ted Nash described his experience with Jamal’s style in an interview with Down Beat magazine: “The way he comped wasn’t the generic way that lots of pianists play with chords in the middle of the keyboard, just filling things up. He gave lots of single line responses. He’d come back and throw things out at you, directly from what you played. It was really interesting because it made you stop, and allowed him to respond, and then you felt like playing something else – that’s something I don’t feel with a lot of piano players. It’s really quite engaging. I guess that’s another reason people focus in on him. He makes them hone in [sic].”[32]

Jamal has recorded with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful and Cry Young; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on In Concert; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of Pittsburgh; with The Assai Quartet; and with saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence.

Black History 365: Edmonia Lewis

November 30, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonia_Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis, also known as “Wildfire” (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907), was an American sculptor, of mixed African-American and Native American (Mississauga Ojibwe) heritage. Born free in Upstate New York, she worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She was the first African-American and Native American sculptor to achieve national and then international prominence.[1] She began to gain prominence in the United States during the Civil War; at the end of the 19th century, she remained the only Black woman artist who had participated in and been recognized to any extent by the American artistic mainstream.[2] In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Edmonia Lewis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[3]

Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to Black people and indigenous peoples of the Americas into Neoclassical-style sculpture.

Life and career

Early life

Hiawatha, 1868, by Edmonia Lewis, inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha.

According to the American National Biography, reliable information about her early life is limited, and Lewis “was often inconsistent in interviews even with basic facts about her origins, preferring to present herself as the exotic product of a childhood spent roaming the forests with her mother’s people.”[4] On official documents she variously gave 1842, 1844, and 1854 as her birth year.[5] She was born near Albany, New York.[4] Most of her girlhood was apparently spent in Newark, New Jersey.[6][7]

Her mother, Catherine Mike Lewis, was African-Native American, of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent.[8][9] She was an excellent weaver and craftswoman. Two different African-American men are mentioned in different sources as being her father. The first is Samuel Lewis,[4] who was Afro-Haitian and worked as a valet (gentleman’s servant).[10][11] Other sources say her father was the writer on African Americans, Robert Benjamin Lewis.[12] Her half-brother Samuel, who is treated at some length in a history of Montana,[13] said that their father was “a West Indian Frenchman”, and his mother “part African and partly a descendant of the educated Narragansett Indians of New York state.”[14] (the Narragansett people are originally from Rhode Island.)

By the time Lewis reached the age of nine, both of her parents had died; Samuel Lewis died in 1847[15] and Robert Benjamin Lewis in 1853. Her two maternal aunts adopted her and her older half-brother Samuel.[8] Samuel was born in 1835 to his father of the same name, and his first wife, in Haiti. The family came to the United States when Samuel was a young child.[15] Samuel became a barber at age 12 after their father died.[15]

The children lived with their aunts near Niagara Falls, New York, for about four years. Lewis and her aunts sold Ojibwe baskets and other items, such as moccasins and embroidered blouses, to tourists visiting Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Buffalo. During this time, Lewis went by her Native American name, Wildfire, while her brother was called Sunshine. In 1852, Samuel left for San Francisco, California, leaving Lewis in the care of a Captain S. R. Mills.

By the time she got to college, Lewis was economically privileged, because her older brother Samuel had made a fortune in the California gold rush and “supplied her every want anticipating her wishes after the style and manner of a person of ample income”.[14]

In 1856, Lewis enrolled in a pre-college program at New York Central College, a Baptist abolitionist school.[8] At McGrawville, Lewis met many of the leading activists who would become mentors, patrons, and possible subjects for her work as her artistic career developed.[16] In a later interview, Lewis said that she left the school after three years, having been “declared to be wild.”[17]

Until I was twelve years old I led this wandering life, fishing and swimming…and making moccasins. I was then sent to school for three years in [McGrawville], but was declared to be wild—they could do nothing with me.

— Edmonia Lewis[18]

However, her academic record at Central College (1856–fall 1858) has been located, and her grades, “conduct”, and attendance were all exemplary. Her classes included Latin, French, “grammar”, arithmetic, drawing, composition, and declamation (public speaking).[19]

Education

In 1859, when Edmonia Lewis was about 15 years old, her brother Samuel and abolitionists sent her to Oberlin, Ohio, where she attended the secondary Oberlin Academy Preparatory School for the full, three-year course,[20] before entering Oberlin Collegiate Institute (since 1866, Oberlin College),[21] one of the first U.S. higher-learning institutions to admit women and people of differing ethnicities.[22] The Ladies’ Department was designed “to give Young Ladies facilities for the thorough mental discipline, and the special training which will qualify them for teaching and other duties of their sphere.”[23] She changed her name to Mary Edmonia Lewis[24] and began to study art.[25] Lewis boarded with Reverend John Keep and his wife from 1859 until she was forced from the college in 1863. At Oberlin, with a student population of one thousand, Lewis was one of only 30 students of color.[26] Reverend Keep was white, a member of the board of trustees, an avid abolitionist, and a spokesperson for coeducation.[17]

Mary said later that she was subject to daily racism and discrimination. She, and other female students, were rarely given the opportunity to participate in the classroom or speak at public meetings.[27]

During the winter of 1862, several months after the start of the US Civil War, an incident occurred between Lewis and two Oberlin classmates, Maria Miles and Christina Ennes. The three women, all boarding in Keep’s home, planned to go sleigh riding with some young men later that day. Before the sleighing, Lewis served her friends a drink of spiced wine. Shortly after, Miles and Ennes fell severely ill. Doctors examined them and concluded that the two women had some sort of poison in their system, supposedly cantharides, a reputed aphrodisiac. For a time it was not certain that they would survive. Days later, it became apparent that the two women would recover from the incident. Authorities initially took no action.

News of the controversial incident rapidly spread throughout Ohio. In the town of Oberlin, where the general population was not as progressive as at the college, while Lewis was walking home alone one night she was dragged into an open field by unknown assailants, badly beaten, and left for dead.[28] After the attack, local authorities arrested Lewis, charging her with poisoning her friends. John Mercer Langston, an Oberlin College alumnus and the first African-American lawyer in Ohio, represented Lewis during her trial. Although most witnesses spoke against her and she did not testify, Chapman moved successfully to have the charges dismissed: the contents of the victims’ stomachs had not been analyzed and there was, therefore, no evidence of poisoning, no corpus delicti.[29][30][6]

The remainder of Lewis’ time at Oberlin was marked by isolation and prejudice. About a year after the poisoning trial, Lewis was accused of stealing artists’ materials from the college. She was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Only a few months later she was charged with aiding and abetting a burglary. At this point she had had enough, and left.[6] Another report says that she was forbidden from registering for her last term, leaving her unable to graduate.[31]

In 2022, she was awarded a degree posthumously by Oberlin College.[32][33]

Art career

Boston

After college, Lewis moved to Boston in early 1864, where she began to pursue her career as a sculptor. She repeatedly told a story about encountering in Boston a statue of Benjamin Franklin, not knowing what it was or what to call it, but concluding she could make a “stone man” herself.[34]

The Keeps wrote a letter of introduction on Lewis’ behalf to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, as did Henry Highland Garnet.[35] He introduced her to already established sculptors in the area, as well as writers who publicized Lewis in the abolitionist press.[36] Finding an instructor, however, was not easy for her. Three male sculptors refused to instruct her before she was introduced to the moderately successful sculptor, Edward Augustus Brackett (1818–1908), who specialized in marble portrait busts.[37][38][39] His clients were some of the most important abolitionists of the day, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, and John Brown.[38]

To instruct her, he lent her fragments of sculptures to copy in clay, which he critiqued.[39] Under his tutelage, she crafted her own sculpting tools and sold her first piece, a sculpture of a woman’s hand, for $8.[40] Anne Whitney, a fellow sculptor and friend of Lewis’, wrote in an 1864 letter to her sister that Lewis’s relationship with her instructor did not end amicably, but did not disclose the reason for the split.[38] Lewis opened her studio to the public in her first solo exhibition in 1864.[41]

Lewis was inspired by the lives of abolitionists and Civil War heroes. Her subjects in 1863 and 1864 included some of the most famous abolitionists of her day: John Brown and Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.[42] When she met Union Colonel Shaw, the commander of an African-American Civil War regiment from Massachusetts, she was inspired to create a bust of his likeness, which impressed the Shaw family, who purchased it.[43] Lewis then made plaster-cast reproductions of the bust; she sold one hundred at 15 dollars apiece.[44] This was her most famous work to date and the money she earned from the busts allowed her to eventually move to Rome.[45][46] Anna Quincy Waterston, a poet, then wrote a poem about both Lewis and Shaw.[47]

From 1864 to 1871, Lewis was written about or interviewed by Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Peabody, Anna Quincy Waterston, and Laura Curtis Bullard: all important women in Boston and New York abolitionist circles.[38] Because of these women, articles about Lewis appeared in important abolitionist journals, including Broken Fetter, the Christian Register, and the Independent, as well as many others.[42] Lewis was aware of her reception in Boston. She was not opposed to the coverage she received in the abolitionist press, and she was not known to turn down monetary aid, but she could not tolerate the false praise. She knew that some did not really appreciate her art, but saw her as an opportunity to express and show their support for human rights.[48]

Early works that proved highly popular included medallion portraits of the abolitionists John Brown, described as “her hero”,[35] and Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Lewis also drew inspiration from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his work, particularly his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. She made several busts of its leading characters, which he drew from Ojibwe legend.[49]

Rome

While in Rome, Lewis adopted the neoclassical style of sculpture, as seen in Bust of Dr. Dio Lewis (1868).[50]

I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.[35]

The success and popularity of these works in Boston allowed Lewis to bear the cost of a trip to Rome in 1866.[51] On her 1865 passport is written, “M. Edmonia Lewis is a Black girl sent by subscription to Italy having displayed great talents as a sculptor”.[52] The established sculptor Hiram Powers gave her space to work in his studio.[53] She entered a circle of expatriate artists and established her own space within the former studio of 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova,[54] just off the Piazza Barberini.[46] She received professional support from both Charlotte Cushman, a Boston actress and a pivotal figure for expatriate sculptors in Rome, and Maria Weston Chapman, a dedicated worker for the anti-slavery cause.[55]

Lewis spent most of her adult career in Rome, where Italy’s less pronounced racism allowed increased opportunity to a black artist.[2] There Lewis enjoyed more social, spiritual, and artistic freedom than what she had had in the United States. She was Catholic and Rome allowed her both spiritual and physical closeness to her faith. In America, Lewis would have had to continue relying on abolitionist patronage; but Italy allowed her to make her own in the international art world.[56] She began sculpting in marble, working within the neoclassical manner, but focusing on naturalism within themes and images relating to black and American Indian people.[57] The surroundings of the classical world greatly inspired her and influenced her work, in which she recreated the classical art style—such as presenting people in her sculptures as draped in robes rather than in contemporary clothing.[58]

She wears a red cap in her studio, which is very picturesque and effective; her face is a bright, intelligent, and expressive one. Her manners are child-like, simple and most winning and pleasing…. There is something in human nature…which makes everyone admire a brave and heroic spirit; and if people are not always ready to lend a helping hand to struggling genius, they are all eager to applaud when those struggles are drowned with success. The hour of applause has come to Edmonia Lewis.[59]

Lewis was unique in the way she approached sculpting abroad. She insisted on enlarging her clay and wax models in marble herself, rather than hire native Italian sculptors to do it for her – the common practice at the time. Male sculptors were largely skeptical of the talent of female sculptors, and often accused them of not doing their own work.[56] Harriet Hosmer, a fellow sculptor and expatriate, also did this. Lewis also was known to make sculptures before receiving commissions for them, or sent unsolicited works to Boston patrons requesting that they raise funds for materials and shipping.[57]

While in Rome, Lewis continued to express her African-American and Native American heritage. One of her more famous works, “Forever Free“, depicted a powerful image of an African-American man and women emerging from the bonds of slavery. Another sculpture Lewis created was called “The Arrow Maker”, which showed a Native American father teaching his daughter how to make an arrow.[45]

Her work sold for large sums of money. In 1873 an article in the New Orleans Picayune stated: “Edmonia Lewis had snared two 50,000-dollar commissions.” Her new-found popularity made her studio a tourist destination.[60] Lewis had many major exhibitions during her rise to fame, including one in Chicago, Illinois, in 1870, and in Rome in 1871.[25]

In 1872, Edmonia was summoned to Peterboro, New York, to sculpt wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith, a project conceived by his friends. Smith was not pleased and what Lewis completed was a sculpture of the clasped hands of Gerrit and his beloved wife Ann.[61]

The Death of Cleopatra

A major coup in her career was participating in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.[62] For this, she created a monumental 3,015-pound marble sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, portraying the queen in the throes of death.[63] This piece depicts the moment popularized by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra had allowed herself to be bitten by a poisonous asp following the loss of her crown.[26] Of the piece, J. S. Ingraham wrote that Cleopatra was “the most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section” of the Exposition.[64] Much of the viewing public was shocked by Lewis’s frank portrayal of death, but the statue drew thousands of viewers nonetheless.[65] Cleopatra was considered a woman of both sensuous beauty and demonic power, and[66] her self-annihilation has been portrayed numerously in art, literature and cinema. In Death of Cleopatra, Edmonia Lewis added an innovative flair by portraying the Egyptian queen in a disheveled, inelegant manner, a departure from the refined, composed Victorian approach of representing death.[67] Considering Lewis’s interest in emancipation imagery as seen in her work Forever Free, it is not surprising that Lewis eliminated Cleopatra’s usual companion figures of loyal slaves from her work. Lewis’s The Death of Cleopatra may have been a response to the culture of the Centennial Exposition, which celebrated one hundred years of the United States being built around the principles of liberty and freedom, a celebration of unity despite centuries of slavery, the recent Civil War, and the failing attempts and efforts of Reconstruction. In order to avoid any acknowledgement of black empowerment by the Centennial, Lewis’s sculpture could not have directly addressed the subject of Emancipation.[26] Although her white contemporaries were also sculpting Cleopatra and other comparable subject matter (such as Harriet Hosmer’s Zenobia), Lewis was more prone to scrutiny on the premise of race and gender due to the fact that she, like Cleopatra, was female:

The associations between Cleopatra and a black Africa were so profound that…any depiction of the ancient Egyptian queen had to contend with the issue of her race and the potential expectation of her blackness. Lewis’ white queen gained the aura of historical accuracy through primary research without sacrificing its symbolic links to abolitionism, black Africa, or black diaspora. But what it refused to facilitate was the racial objectification of the artist’s body. Lewis could not so readily become the subject of her own representation if her subject was corporeally white.[68]

After being placed in storage, the statue was moved to the 1878 Chicago Interstate Exposition, where it remained unsold. Then the sculpture was acquired by a gambler by the name of “Blind John” Condon, who purchased it from a saloon on Clark Street to mark the grave of a Racehorse named “Cleopatra”.[69] The grave was in front of the grandstand of his Harlem race track in the Chicago suburb of Forest Park, where the sculpture remained for nearly a century until the land was bought by the U.S. Postal Service[70] and the sculpture was moved to a construction storage yard in Cicero, Illinois.[71][70] While at the storage yard, The Death of Cleopatra sustained extensive damage at the hands of well-meaning Boy Scouts who painted and caused other damage to the sculpture. Dr. James Orland, a dentist in Forest Park and member of the Forest Park Historical Society, acquired the sculpture and held it in private storage at the Forest Park Mall.

Later, Marilyn Richardson, an assistant professor in the erstwhile The Writing Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later curator and scholar of African-American art, went searching for The Death of Cleopatra for her biography of Lewis. Richardson was directed to the Forest Park Historical Society and Dr. Orland by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who had earlier been contacted by the historical society regarding the sculpture. Richardson, after confirming the sculpture’s location, contacted African-American bibliographer Dorothy Porter Wesley, and the two gained the attention of NMAA‘s George Gurney.[72] According to Gurney, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[73] the sculpture was in a race track in Forest Park, Illinois, during World War II. Finally, the sculpture came under the purview of the Forest Park Historical Society, who donated it to Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1994.[71] Chicago-based Andrezej Dajnowski, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, spent $30,000 to restore it to its near-original state. The repairs were extensive, including the nose, sandals, hands, chin, and extensive “sugaring” (disintegration.)[72]

Later career

A testament to Lewis’s renown as an artist came in 1877, when former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to do his portrait. He sat for her as a model and was pleased with her finished piece.[74] She also contributed a bust of Massachusetts abolitionist senator Charles Sumner to the 1895 Atlanta Exposition.[75]

In the late 1880s, neoclassicism declined in popularity, as did the popularity of Lewis’s artwork. She continued sculpting in marble, increasingly creating altarpieces and other works for Catholic patrons. A bust of Christ, created in her Rome studio in 1870, was rediscovered in Scotland in 2015.[46] In the art world, she became eclipsed by history, and lost fame. By 1901 she had moved to London.[76][a]

The events of her later years are not known.[25]

Death

From 1896 to 1901 Lewis lived in Paris.[46] She then relocated to the Hammersmith area of London, England, before her death on September 17, 1907, in the Hammersmith Borough Infirmary.[77] According to her death certificate, the cause of her death was chronic kidney failure (Bright’s disease).[27] She is buried in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, in London.[78]

There were earlier theories that Lewis died in Rome in 1907 or, alternatively, that she had died in Marin County, California, and was buried in an unmarked grave in San Francisco.[79]

In 2017, a GoFundMe by East Greenbush, New York, town historian Bobbie Reno was successful, and Edmonia Lewis’s grave was restored.[80] The work was done by the E M Lander Co. in London.

Reception

As a black artist, Edmonia Lewis had to be conscious of her stylistic choices, as her largely white audience often gravely misread her work as self-portraiture. In order to avoid this, her female figures typically possess European features.[2] Lewis had to balance her own personal identity with her artistic, social, and national identity, a tiring activity that affected her art.[81]

In her 2007 work, Charmaine Nelson wrote of Lewis:

It is hard to overstate the visual incongruity of the black-Native female body, let alone that identity in a sculptor, within the Roman colony. As the first black-Native sculptor of either sex to achieve international recognition within a western sculptural tradition, Lewis was a symbolic and social anomaly within a dominantly white bourgeois and aristocratic community.[2]

Personal life

Lewis never married and had no known children.[82] According to her biographer, Dr. Marilyn Richardson, there is no definite information about her romantic involvement with anyone.[83] However, in 1873 her engagement was announced,[84] and in 1875, her fiance’s skin color was revealed to be the same as hers, although his name is not given.[85] There is no further reference to this engagement.

Her half-brother Samuel became a barber in San Francisco, eventually moving to mining camps in Idaho and Montana. In 1868, he settled in the city of Bozeman, Montana, where he set up a barber shop on Main Street. He prospered, eventually investing in commercial real estate, and subsequently built his own home which still stands at 308 South Bozeman Avenue. In 1999 the Samuel Lewis House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1884, he married Mrs. Melissa Railey Bruce, a widow with six children. The couple had one son, Samuel E. Lewis (1886–1914), who married but died childless. The elder Lewis died after “a short illness” in 1896 and is buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman.[15] The mayor of Bozeman was a pallbearer.[15]

Popular works

Old Arrow-Maker and his Daughter (1866)

This sculpture was inspired by Lewis’s Native American heritage. An arrow-maker and his daughter sit on a round base, dressed in traditional Native American clothes. The male figure has recognizable Native American facial features, but not the daughter. As white audiences’ misread her work as self-portraiture, she often removed all facial features associated with “colored” races in female portrayal.[86]

Forever Free (1867)

Main article: Forever Free (sculpture)

Forever Free, 1867

The words “forever free” are taken from President Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation.

This white marble sculpture represents a man standing, staring up, and raising his left arm into the air. Wrapped around his left wrist is a chain; however, this chain is not restraining him. To his right is a woman kneeling with her hands held in a prayer position. The man’s right hand is gently placed on her right shoulder. Forever Free is a celebration of black liberation, salvation, and redemption, and represents the emancipation of African-American slaves. Lewis attempted to break stereotypes of African-American women with this sculpture. For example, she portrayed the woman as completely dressed while the man was partially dressed. This drew attention away from the notion of African-American women being sexual figures. This sculpture also symbolizes the end of the Civil War. While African Americans were legally free, they continued to be restrained, shown by the fact that the couple had chains wrapped around their bodies. The representation of race and gender has been critiqued by modern scholars, particularly the Eurocentric features of the female figure. This piece is held by Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[87]

Hagar (1868)

Lewis had a tendency to sculpt historically strong women, as demonstrated not just in Hagar but also in Lewis’s Cleopatra piece. Lewis also depicted ordinary women in extreme situations, emphasizing their strength.[82] Hagar is inspired by a character from the Old Testament, the handmaid or slave of Abraham’s wife Sarah. Being unable to conceive a child, Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham, in order to bear him a son. Hagar gave birth to Abraham’s firstborn son Ishmael, and after Sarah gave birth to her own son Isaac, she resented Hagar and made Abraham “cast her into the wilderness”. The piece was made of white marble, and Hagar is standing as if about to walk on, with her hands clasped in prayer and staring slightly up but not straight across. Lewis uses Hagar to symbolize the African mother in the United States, and the frequent sexual abuse of African women by white men.

The Death of Cleopatra (1876)

Discussed above.

In popular media

  • Namesake of the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgender People at Oberlin College.[88]
  • Written about in Olio, which is a book of poetry written by Tyehimba Jess that was released in 2016.[89][90] That book won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.[91]
  • Honored with a Google Doodle on February 1, 2017.[92]
  • Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis, by Jeannine Atkins (2017), is a juvenile biographical novel in verse.[93]
  • A belated obituary was published in The New York Times in 2018 as part of their Overlooked series.[94]
  • The best-selling novel, La linea del colori: Il Grand Tour di Lafanu Brown, by Somalian Igiaba Scelgo (Florence: Giunti, 2020), in Italian, combines the characters of Edmonia Lewis and Sarah Parker Remond and is dedicated to Rome and to these two figures.
  • She features as a “Great Artist” in the video game Civilization VI.
  • Lewis is the subject of a stage play entitled “Edmonia” by Barry M. Putt, Jr., presented by Beacon Theatre Productions in Philadelphia, PA in 2021. “Edmonia” stage play.
  • Lewis had a U.S. postal stamp unveiled in her honor on January 26, 2022.[95][96]

List of major works

  • John Brown medallions, 1864–65
  • Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (plaster), 1864
  • Anne Quincy Waterston, 1866
  • A Freed Woman and Her Child, 1866
  • The Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter, 1866
  • The Marriage of Hiawatha, 1866–67[97]
  • Forever Free, 1867
  • Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (marble), 1867–68
  • Hagar in the Wilderness, 1868
  • Madonna Holding the Christ Child, 1869[97]
  • Hiawatha, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1868[b]
  • Minnehaha, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1868[b]
  • Indian Combat, Carrara marble, 30″ high, collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1868[98]
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869–71
  • Bust of Abraham Lincoln, 1870[c]22,
  • Asleep, 1872[c]
  • Awake, 1872[c]
  • Poor Cupid, 1873
  • Moses, 1873
  • Bust of James Peck Thomas, 1874, collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, her only known portrait of a freed slave[100]
  • Hygieia, 1874
  • Hagar, 1875
  • The Death of Cleopatra, marble, 1876, collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • John Brown, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
  • General Ulysses S. Grant, 1877–78
  • Veiled Bride of Spring, 1878
  • John Brown, 1878–79
  • The Adoration of the Magi, 1883[101]
  • Charles Sumner, 1895