Barack loves da arts

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/05/barack-obama-michelle-obama-james-earl-jones-lin-manuel-miranda-def-poetry-jam.html

Despite technical glitches, Obama's cultural evening is powerfully intimate
7:13 AM, May 13, 2009


For a president with more than his fair share of crises on his plate, Barack Obama’s decision to devote an hour Tuesday to promoting the arts should come as welcome assurance that culture has a good friend at the White House.

In what was billed as an evening of poetry, music and spoken word, a group of about 10 artists and writers — including James Earl Jones, Michael Chabon and Lin-Manuel Miranda — entertained the first family and an invited audience of students from several local universities in Washington.

It was the first installment in what the administration has stated will be an ongoing effort to make the White House more accessible and culturally engaged.

“We’re here tonight ... to highlight the importance of the arts in our nation and our nation’s history,” Obama told the crowd.

“The arts have the ability to lift us out of our daily existence, if only for a few moments.”

The first lady then took the lectern, telling the audience to “have fun, be loose.”

“I’ve wanted to do this from Day One,” said Michelle Obama. “It’s another way to open the White House and to make it the people’s home.”

But even the best intentions can have flaws; it’s clear that the people’s home needs a better sound system.


The entire event was broadcast live on the White House’s official website, but recurring static noise rendered large swaths of the evening inaudible or difficult to hear for Internet audiences. The problem was most noticeable during the musical portions of the evening.

Another technical problem was a roving camera that failed to find a comfortable resting place. Despite these frustrations, the jazzed mood emanating from the East Room of the White House was palpable and infectious. All it took was a dramatic spotlight and a couple of melancholy piano chords to transform the space into a hip downtown cafe.

Each performance lasted three to five minutes, alternating between spoken word and music.
The centerpiece of the evening was Jones, who performed a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s “Othello” in which the Moorish general testifies in front of the senate of Venice. Reciting from memory, Jones found humor and pathos in the difficult speech, delivering hammy moments with intensity and relish.

Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, performed a comic duet in which they made fun of their inability to authentically deliver spoken-word poetry.

Members of Def Poetry Jam performed short spoken numbers while musicians including Esperanza Spalding, Mayda Del Valle and Eric Lewis performed instrumental and vocal pieces that ranged from jazz to soul.

Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda closed the evening in an energetic solo number accompanied by piano.

The president and the first lady stayed for the entire event, even leading the standing ovation at the end. (They were accompanied by their children, Sasha and Malia, both sporting bluejeans.)

Populist outreach is nothing new in the White House — you might consider the evening’s webcast as a kind of modern-day fireside chat with a cultural slant. The intimacy of the moment — no matter if it was staged or scripted — is a potent political tool.

The camera lingered on Obama as he shook hands with the artists after the concert, chatting with them at length. For those who care about culture, that’s as powerful as symbols get.

-- David Ng

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_202893.html (slide show of White House Poetry Jam)

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http://www.rhapsody.com/player?type=album&id=228160&remote=undefined&page=undefined&pageregion=undefined&guid=undefined&from=undefined&hasrhapx=false&__pcode=rs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYo1WVcAZ4M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwH1JSaNU6w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tIUxxBiP2w

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Re: Barack loves da arts

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/arts/music/16jazz.html?hp

At the White House, a Blend of Jazz Greats and Hopefuls

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Published: June 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — It was not the full-force, let-a-thousand-saxophones-bloom, this-is-our-music festival that some might have wished from a White House where the language of jazz seems to have a place, at least in the president’s iPod. But it was a good start.

On Monday afternoon, Michelle Obama invited about 150 high school jazz students to the White House for a program called Jazz Studio. There was a student clinic including five members of the Marsalis family and the clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, and then a short concert introduced by the first lady.

Before some readers begin feeling too righteous, it’s important to know that the event wasn’t a pure, stand-alone expression of love for jazz; it was the first in a series of three very different musical events in the White House this year.

So if the short afternoon event was largely symbolic for those on the sidelines, quickly and easily establishing the notion that the new administration is interested in musical genres other than country, it was a useful, practical event for the students.

The young musicians were divided into three groups of 50, and the workshop themes were “American History and Jazz,” “Syntax of Jazz,” “The Blues Experience and Jazz” and “Duke Ellington and Swing.” Other workshop leaders included the saxophonist Todd Williams, the trumpeter Sean Jones and the pianist Eli Yamin.

The event was organized in conjunction with the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival in Washington, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and several other institutions.

The Marsalises — especially Wynton and his father, Ellis — are born teachers, and, at least during the part of their hourlong clinic that journalists were allowed to watch, they packed important, basic lessons about jazz history and practice into short spaces. The students drank it in, and the teachers beamed.

After the elder Mr. Marsalis talked for a while about individual expression in jazz and the birth of swing rhythm, the students traded 12-bar improvisations with the master musicians on a blues tune. And then Wynton Marsalis doled out bits of advice, without aiming them at particular players. The advice: never slink off looking mad at yourself after your solo, don’t abuse the rhythm section and play shorter.

“The blues forces us to feel vocal elements in our playing,” Mr. Marsalis said, “and it keeps us from going” — here he played a fast, ripping, show-off improvisation that wasn’t vocal at all. “Now, I’m going to play, and Branford is going to imitate.”

The students quickly jumped in. None were virtuosos; some, including a trumpeter from New York, Ivan Rosenberg, were quite good. Perhaps sensing a competitive spirit, Mr. Marsalis pushed Mr. Rosenberg into smeared, highly expressive whines; finally he played a whinnying phrase that trailed into fast, articulated notes. “I can’t do that, man,” Mr. Rosenberg said, laughing and backing off.

Sharing a stage with Wynton Marsalis, who teaches constantly on the road, is not out of the realm of possibility for a gifted young jazz musician. But doing it at the White House can make you starry-eyed.

“That was crazy,” said Phillip Slyde, an able 17-year-old alto saxophonist who played question-and-answer with Mr. D’Rivera. He came up from New Orleans the day before, he said. He was recuperating from nerves, in the expectant hush before Mrs. Obama’s arrival.

Kyle Wedberg, the president of his school, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, appeared behind him. “This says that normal, everyday Americans have a place in this White House, versus people that have some leverage to get in here,” Mr. Wedberg said, breathlessly. “We changed 14 lives today. That’s amazing: it’s a great use of this public facility.”

In her four-minute speech, Mrs. Obama brushed across two well-known thoughts about jazz — that it “may be America’s greatest gift to the world” and that “there is no better example of democracy than a jazz ensemble” — but she basically made way for the closing concert, which put Mr. D’Rivera and Mr. Marsalis in front of a young band, including the pianist Tony Madruga and the saxophonist Elijah Easton.

Mr. D’Rivera played embroidered versions of famous jazz melodies on the clarinet, encouraging the student audience to guess their titles and composers. When he played a famous Dizzy Gillespie phrase, the audience — including Mrs. Obama, seated in the front row with her daughters — answered promptly with the correct response: “Salt peanuts, salt peanuts.” “Ahhh!” Mr. D’Rivera shouted, looking extremely pleased. “Michelle knows it!”

The next event in the White House music series, with details to be announced later in the summer, will focus on country music.

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http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/06/15/natpkg.flotus.jazz.cnn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBWtWmvxnNY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsdUZF9v6D8

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Re: Barack loves da arts

And, urdu poetry too.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24055.html

Spread the word: Obama says he digs Urdu poetry
By ABBY PHILLIP | 6/23/09 6:48 AM EDT

If you want to make high-brow small talk at one of President Barack Obama’s xxxxtail parties, don’t bother brushing up your Shakespeare. Try reading Urdu poetry.


As POLITICO’s Ben Smith points out in his blog, Obama showed off his intellectual flair by evoking a standard of Pakistani culture in a recent interview with Dawn, a popular English-language newspaper in Pakistan.


“‘I would love to visit. As you know, I had Pakistani roommates in college who were very close friends of mine. I went to visit them when I was still in college; was in Karachi and went to Hyderabad. Their mothers taught me to cook,’ said Mr Obama.


‘What can you cook?’


‘Oh, keema ... daal ... You name it, I can cook it. And so I have a great affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.’


‘You read Urdu poetry?’


‘Absolutely. So my hope is that I’m going to have an opportunity at some point to visit Pakistan,’ said Mr Obama.”


It may sound somewhat esoteric, but this ancient form of mystical and oft-times philosophical love poetry has been popular in Pakistan and parts of India for centuries. And there are a few things to know before you try to impress the poetry-lover-in-chief.


One of the most popular poets was Mirza Ghalib, whose work dates from the mid-19th century. The still-popular art form usually features the story of a lover scorned by his beloved. And there is almost never a happy ending. “Often the beloved is often a total witch,” says Gwen Kirk, a University of Texas master’s candidate in the subject of Urdu poetry. “She breaks the lover’s heart all the time; she neglects him. It’s all about the process of trying to get closer to the beloved, and it’s got a lot of Sufi and mystical elements as well.”


The ghazal is the most common form of Urdu poetry, and, like sonnets, it follows strict rules of form: four to 12 couplets with a meter and rhyme scheme. But the similarities end there. Couplets in an Urdu poem can sometimes be completely unrelated to each other, each delving into themes that range from unrequited love to the meaning of life.


Fear not if your Urdu — one of two official languages in Pakistan — is a little rusty. Obama likely reads one of the many translated compilations of the texts, according to Kirk. Or if he is a truly savvy Urdu poetry enthusiast, he may choose to listen to the poems recited or sung, as it is commonly performed in the region.


Obama’s admission that he shares an affinity with the “great Urdu poets” may get him further in the region than most think. The language and poetry are commonly associated with Pakistan’s and India’s Muslim population, according to Kirk, and it remains intensely popular in the region — poetry recitals sometimes attract gatherings of thousands of people.


“It does show a willingness to understand that part of the world,” says Kirk.


And in general, it gives Obama further credibility as a supporter of the arts. Not only is he one of three American presidents to have poetry read at their Inaugurations, but he reads the stuff, too!


Want to dig into Urdu poetry? Here’s an example of what awaits you:


To hell with all hindering walls and doors!

Love’s eye sees as feather and wing, walls and doors.

My flooded eyes blur the house

Doors and walls becoming walls and doors.

There is no shelter: my love is on her way,

They’ve gone ahead in greeting, walls and doors.

The wine of your splendor floods

Your street, intoxicating walls and doors.

(Translated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Frances W. Pritchett)

[iFemale]

Re: Barack loves da arts

Barack's a Leo; so am I.

I guess we're both artsy fartsy. Who would have thought?

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Re: Barack loves da arts

POTUS and first lady seek loans of contemporary art inlcuding that of African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and women for display at the White House. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/artic...0support/18560

African American art still needs support
The Obamas' actions have evinced an ability to transform the bully pulpit into a poetic perch

By Kinshasha Holman Conwill | From issue 204, July/August 2009
Published online 16.7.09 (opinion)


The US art world is abuzz over the White House campaign to bring a greater diversity to its art collection—including more works by African American artists [the Obamas have been quietly notifying an array of public institutions, dealers and collectors that they are looking to borrow first-rate art of a more recent vintage to display in the White House with an emphasis on works by black, Hispanic, Asian and female artists]. Such a gesture from so influential a place has understandably had a catalytic effect—stirring conversation, raising expectations. And that’s a good thing. The move is also throwing a strong light on African American art and the artists who create it.




This comes at a time of increased interest in African American art among mainstream museums and collectors. The 2007 retrospective by the renowned sculptor Martin Puryear, organised by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and shown at major museums across the country is one of the most vivid examples of that interest. It follows by two years the Sam Gilliam retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery. Gilliam’s participation in the 1972 Venice Biennale foreshadowed the watershed decades of the 1980s and 1990s which saw African American artists from Puryear to Robert Colescott, Emilio Cruz, Leonardo Drew, Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, John Outterbridge, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, Nari Ward and Fred Wilson, among others, represent the US in international venues from São Paulo to Venice, from Johannesburg to Cairo, Dakar, Kassel, Sydney, Istanbul and Cuenca.




Yet this was not always the case. There was a time not long ago when one could visit major museums or attend international fairs and rarely find works by African American artists. Their work was rarer still at auctions and those few there were, were not commanding prices commensurate with their cultural significance nor competitive with their non-African American counterparts.




Those of us building the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture have a keen interest in past history and current practice as we determine the role of African American art in a museum with a mandate to tell the broad story of the African American experience. We needn’t look far for inspiration in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum—one of the strongest and most longstanding collections of African American art in this country—and the growing holdings of the National Portrait Gallery, two sister institutions with whom we are collaborating. Beyond the National Mall, the collections begun in the 100 years after the Civil War, including those documented in the major travelling exhibition, “To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities” (organised by the Addison Gallery and the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1999), were for decades the nearly singular models of continuous commitment to African American art. The stewards of those collections—joined over the decades by scores of private nonprofit museums of African American history and culture—have often been the most stalwart advocates of art by African Americans.




The arts need such advocacy to survive. African American art, given its historically lower level of sustained attention, requires advocacy at a higher volume. The President and First Lady already have provided a resonant and nuanced voice for a more diverse notion of American art.




What is the significance of the attention being paid to the art of African Americans by this country’s most visible museum? Puryear is arguably one of America’s greatest sculptors and certainly doesn’t require the imprimatur of the White House. Many of his peers seem to be skillfully navigating the fraught waters of contemporary art as well.




Yet when one steps outside the vaunted and insular precincts of art, validation takes on a different tone. Beyond museum exhibitions, auction prices, critical reviews and international fairs, lies the vast territory of a larger society less swayed by esoteric notions of the valorisation of art and artists. Rather, there one finds a public whose tastes and desires are being stirred by the heady—and welcomed—promise of change. It is that indefinable sense of possibility that opens minds and fuels concrete action to challenge the status quo.




It would be presumptuous and premature to predict that the actions of one president, even one as influential as Barack Obama, would singlehandedly alter the course of American art history or the destinies of African American artists. Yet his and the First Lady’s early actions in expanding the agenda for White House art have evinced an ability to transform the bully pulpit into a poetic perch from which to suggest new strategies for broadening the conversation about art and culture in this country. The echoes of those actions are reverberating not only in the hallowed halls of the First Family’s residence, but down the decades of American creative expression.


Does this moment signal a new era in American and African American art? It’s too soon to tell. But it is extraordinarily intriguing in its potential.

The writer is deputy director, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African American History & Culture

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Barack loves da arts

Glenn Beck to interview Patrick Courrielche (author of article "The Big Truth: Selling White House Policy through Art" detailing how Obama Administration is politicizing art) today.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/10/05/the-big-truth-selling-white-house-policy-through-art/

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/10/05/courrielche-to-appear-on-glenn-beck-today-fnc-5pm-et2pm-pst/

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Re: Barack loves da arts

The Obama's picks for art in the White House. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/1..._n_311958.html

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Re: Barack loves da arts

In recognition of black history month, White House celebrates music of the civil rights movement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/arts/music/10concert.html?em=&pagewanted=print

Music That Changed History and Still Resonates
By JON PARELES

WASHINGTON — Half a dozen legislators sat a few feet away, under the crystal chandeliers of the East Room of the White House, as Bob Dylan sang “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” poker-faced.

“Come senators, congressman, please heed the call,” he rasped. “Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.” His tone was rough but almost wistful; he had turned his old exhortation into an autumnal waltz. Afterward, he stepped offstage and shook President Obama’s hand.

It was part of “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.” The program was the Black History Month event in Michelle Obama’s continuing music series at the White House, and will be broadcast Thursday night on PBS.

It was not lost on anyone that Mr. Obama is America’s first African-American president. “The civil rights movement was a movement sustained by music,” Mr. Obama said in opening remarks. The music, he said, “was inspired by the movement and gave strength in return.”

Mr. Dylan shared the bill, though not the stage, with fellow musicians who regularly sang at civil-rights rallies in the early 1960s — Joan Baez, and Bernice Johnson Reagon with the Freedom Singers — and a cross-generational gathering of performers: Smokey Robinson, Jennifer Hudson, John Mellencamp, Yolanda Adams, Natalie Cole, the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Howard University Choir.

With a new snowstorm moving in on the already snowy capital, the program took place a day early. In the afternoon, Mr. Robinson, Ms. Adams, the Freedom Singers and the Blind Boys sang for schoolchildren in the State Dining Room.

If any music can claim to have changed history, it was the songs of the civil rights movement. Rooted in the hymns, gospel and rural ballads of the southland they set out to change, civil rights songs seized a moral high ground with their melodies as well as their words.

The lyrics followed through with the eloquence of sermons and slave songs, transforming them into both topical agitprop and long-term bulwarks of resolve — songs like “Eyes on the Prize,” which Mr. Mellencamp, after reminiscing about the teenage African-American bandmate who taught him how to sing and dance, turned into pugnacious slide-guitar rock.

There was other music directly from the civil rights movement, but the night wasn’t all protest songs and repurposed gospel hymns. It ranged through the 1960s, and into the 1970s when Ms. Cole sang Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” from 1971. The tone of the program shifted between celebration and reflection; Mr. Robinson, in a peculiar choice, performed “Abraham, Martin and John,” Dion DiMucci’s elegy for murdered leaders.

Ms. Baez called for a singalong from the invited audience, and got one, on “We Shall Overcome.” She recalled the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s deciding to protest the Vietnam War. Before she sang, she told Mr. and Mrs. Obama, “You are so much loved.”

The night kept circling back to gospel. Ms. Adams, a gospel luminary, sang Sam Cooke’s hymnlike “A Change Is Gonna Come,” starting gently and growing joyfully vehement. Jennifer Hudson and Mr. Robinson traded lines on “People Get Ready,” a gospel song that was remade into a pop hit. Ms. Cole sang “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” with a New Orleans backbeat, but a closing gospel flourish. Mr. Obama joined the closing all-star singalong for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” often known as the black national anthem.

Some of the songs sounded ready to accompany new struggles. Ms. Reagon led the Freedom Singers as a trio, wearing African-tinged choir robes and backed by her daughter Toshi on guitar. The Freedom Singers, who sang for rallies alongside Dr. King, are elderly now, but they tore into “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round” with fierce, jubilant call-and-response. Ms. Reagon paused the music partway through to instruct the audience.

“You have to actually sing this song,” she said. “You can never tell when you might need it.”