• OBAMA BREAKS INTO SONG

    ~ Posted by Hazel Sheffield, January 24th 2012

    Those who splashed out $200 for a ticket to the Democratic fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre got more than they bargained for last Thursday, when President Obama unexpectedly sang the first line of the Reverend Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together".

    “I’m...so in love with you,” crooned the president, in surprisingly good voice, before grinning and admitting to the real Al Green, “I cannot sing like you.”

    Still, it takes some nerve to break into song in front of nearly 1,400 supporters just moments after the Reverend's own performance. Obama laughed at the applause and pointed backstage. “Those guys didn’t think I would do it!”

    It’s not the first time the president has serenaded his fans. During the 2008 election Obama sang a snatch from Aretha Franklin’s "Chain of Fools" to a crowd that included Franklin herself. That time, he told his audience, "I wasn't going to do that." His good-humoured performance on Thursday night was a welcome respite from the heated exchanges in the Republican debates, which hit Florida with more in-fighting last night.  read more »


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  • LONG LIVE THE KING: AN ELVIS SPOTTING IN DC

    I’m standing at the entrance to a diminutive, seemingly forgotten salon tucked away in a corner of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The corridor just outside, decked with oil paintings of stern-faced founding fathers, hardly prepares me for the gleaming kitsch beyond the threshold. It is January 8th 2010 and the museum has just unveiled “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”, an exhibition celebrating the man’s lasting impact on art and culture. Elvis Presley would have turned 75 today, and I have come to celebrate his birthday. I am the only one here.

    The exhibition is miniature, composed of only a handful of Elvis portraits and memorabilia. And yet: where is the fanfare? Absent are the mutton-chops sporting über-fans, with their inky slicked-back pompadours and sequined white jumpsuits. It’s just me, my notepad and a massive, golden bust of Elvis rendered like he is Julius Caesar.

    The bust forces a double-take. Created by Robert Arneson, this dazzling ceramic sculpture with a gold-tone glaze seems to satirise Elvis’s larger-than-life presence and the reverence he inspires in his admirers. Beneath his signature smirk, this Elvis wears a breastplate adorned with the image of a winged guitar and stamped with song titles. Underneath, a pedestal bears the word “ELVIS” in classical Hellenic lettering—and, less ornately, “THE PELVIS”.  read more »


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  • Dies started irae, turned out okay

    I CAN'T be the only person whose first reaction on hearing about a new crop of MacArthur Fellows is to check their ages, right? Last year, when a woman from my freshman English class won, it was like a dagger to the heart. Let me make clear: this is not a comment on her plays, which sound wonderful, but on the inevitable march of time on top of my pointy, lazy head.

    This year, no kiddies. Better still, it was a banner crop for American music. Dawn Upshaw may be best known for her recording of Gorecki's Third Symphony, which became a huge crossover hit, but some years before that she also did Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," a sublime piece of work. Barber set the words of James Agee to instrumentation as lush and rich as an Appalachian summer night.

    Also scooping up five hundred large was Corey Harris, a singer, composer and guitarist. Usually, when someone recommends anything that could plausibly be called "world music" to me, I point over his head, scream with terror, and run away while his back is turned. This is not cultural chauvinism, of course. Just an allergy to the sort of anodyne, heartfelt (shudder), earnest (shudder, shudder), patchouli-scented undergraduate warbling with bongos (shudder...clunk) you're likely to hear at Starbucks. More reason, then, to praise Mr Harris's "Mississippi to Mali", a penetrating, intelligent, often beautiful exploration of the African roots of Delta blues. Congratulations to both of them.

    And a sigh of relief for me.


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