November 15, 2018

How I'd been feeling the last 2 years: Mission: Impossible - Lalo Schifrin & BBC Bigband

November 13, 2018

AHMAD JAMAL, Arabesque

November 13, 2018

Ahmad Jamal is still with us. Poinciana - Olympia Paris - LIVE

My parents had Mr. Jamal's At the Pershing in their album collection. I was not only entranced by his take on the Great Nat King Cole's Poinciana but I loved the sounds of people in the background at The Pershing. And to see him in recent years, live, my husband had to hold me back from rushing the stage.

November 13, 2018

These Kids respect the classics

November 13, 2018

Take Five. I've been missing Al Jarreau so much today.

|

November 11, 2018

Johnny Smythe

|

"Eddy Smythe reminisces about his father John who was from Sierra Leone and was proud to fly with Bomber Command. John was in service for two and half years, was shot down over Germany and became a prisoner of War for the following two years. After his release John went to London and trained as a barrister. Upon completion of his professional training, he returned to Freetown, Sierra Leonne and set up a large legal practice. One evening, John met the German ambassador at a reception: they realised they were pilots on opposing sides, and the Ambassador shot down an aircraft on exactly the same date and time when John’s aircraft was shot down. This prompted the two men to hug each other and to chat in a friendly way. Eddy adds final remarks on the value of remembrance and reconciliation."

November 11, 2018

The Africans who fought in WWI and WWII

When the major powers of Europe went to war in 1914, so too did half the globe. France and Britain controlled the world’s two largest colonial empires and were quick to draw upon their resources – and their people.

More than four million non-European, non-white soldiers and auxiliaries would serve in WW1. Over a quarter of these soldiers would end up in the battlefields of northern France and Belgium, braving a new type of industrial warfare for which they were often ill-equipped and inadequately trained. They would prove vital in holding the front lines. But the fascinating story of what played out behind the trenches is rarely told. For four years, the tented cities of the Western Front would be the setting for a world in miniature. Against the backdrop of war, soldiers also navigated the cultural battlegrounds and the no-man’s land of race relations at the dawn of the 20th Century.

Pretty thorough report and fantastic photos of all the fighting men from the colonies here http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z2bgr82







WWII
How many now recall the role of more than one million African troops? Yet they fought in the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Burma and over the skies of Germany. A shrinking band of veterans, many now living in poverty, bitterly resent being written out of history. For Africa, World War II began not in 1939, but in 1935. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8344170.stm


Jagama Kello, middle, left home at just 15 to fight Italian invaders


John Henry Smythe, left, read Hitler's Mein Kampf before joining the RAF



2010
For most of the 20th century, France recruited, usually forcibly, men from its colonies in Africa fight its battles around the world. From the first world war in 1914 to the Indochina wars and Algeria’s fight for independence in the 1950s and 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Africans soldiers fought under the French flag. They were called tirailleurs, or “sharpshooters,” a name to mock their limited training. Decades later, 28 of these former soldiers were recognized in a ceremony on April 15 where they were given French citizenship. Many of them were from Senegal, a country that sent more than a third of all of its military- age men to France to fight during World War I.

A group of West African soldiers stationed at camp in Thiaroye, Senegal, mutinied in 1944, demanding equal pay and the same treatment as their French counterparts. French soldiers fired on them, killing up to 400 men. Their mass grave still hasn’t been found.

Over the past few decades, activists have gained some ground. The 2006 French film "Indigènes," about a group of North African soldiers in France during World War II, dramatized the contributions of colonial soldiers in France’s liberation. More than half of French forces in Italy and France between 1943 and 1944 came from African colonies, and at least 40,000 died.
https://qz.com/africa/960851/france-gives-citizenship-and-full-pensions-to-african-soldiers-who-fought-its-20-century-wars/

November 11, 2018

Rep. John Lewis's Book One.

Just attended a One Book, One San Diego Civil Rights activism panel discussion based on Rep. John Lewis's book. We're kind of new here, my 3 sisters and I swooping in to care for our ailing elderly parents and burying them one year apart. It's been 2 years since our mom's passing and 3 since my dad's death. My sisters and I decided it was time to look past our mourning and figure out how to get involved in this new place. And we weren't disappointed with the meeting! Don't know where it will lead but tonight was magical.

Black, Latino and white feminists swooping in on us with overwhelming love and welcome that I cannot describe. The most important thing to me is that these women stressed were our children. Too funny though, was one elderly white dude among all the men who introduced themselves, busted thru the throng of women saying, "I'm just an old white man and not a woman. I was a Freedom Rider back in my day and I want to thank you for coming."

My Gawd, we're still reeling with so many issues touched upon but the most important take-away for me is that the group was multi-generational focusing on our children. A young Latino activist who is an attorney said to us sisters, "I don't want our black and brown youths making it in spite of our education and judicial system." One AA woman said, "We're all about the kids. We don't care what color you are." Then called on a girl a distance away from us, saying, "Jane," not her name and a white youth, "come over here and tell them what we're about."

I'm getting weepy right now because our schedules for the next month are filled and of all the activism I've been involved in, in life, this was special because community and children came first. I'll stop now because I'm so humbled by their welcome and hate being gushy.

November 10, 2018

Groove in G, a global jam

We started this track in West Africa with a musical group named Tinariwen, Grammy Award-winning group from Mali. We asked them to play a groove in the key of G, then as we traveled the world we added more musicians to the song. Over the course of our travels, it transformed into a global jam with its roots in the blues.


|

November 10, 2018

Deep Blues, 1991 film

Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads is a British documentary film, released in 1991, and made by music critic and author Robert Palmer and documentary film maker Robert Mugge, in collaboration with David A. Stewart and his brother John J. Stewart. The film provided insight into the location, cast and characteristics of Delta blues and North Mississippi hill country blues. Filming took place in 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee, and various North Mississippi counties.[1] Theatrical release was in 1991 and home video release in the United Kingdom, the next year, as was a soundtrack album. A United States consumer edition came in 2000.[2]

Stewart initiated and financed the project, inspired by Palmer's 1981 book of the same name. Palmer provided many of the insights into the background and history of the blues, as a guide to Stewart and the film narrator.
[link:|