NEW YORK –– SiriusXM announced the launch of “African Ancestry Radio,” a three-week series of live, call-in shows during which the hosts help listeners and celebrities of African descent in their quest to reconnect with their heritage.
Hosted by Gina Paige, co-founder of African Ancestry, and award-winning producer Shirley Neal, “African Ancestry Radio” launched live on Sunday, February 8 at 12:00 pm ET on SiriusXM Urban View channel 126 with Louis Gossett Jr. and Aunjanue Ellis as their first celebrity guests. EURweb.com’s founder Lee Bailey also joins in each week as special entertainment correspondent.
Scheduled in celebration of Black History Month, the hosts lead conversations on ancestry and heritage and guide SiriusXM listeners who are looking to more accurately and reliably trace their African roots. Themed around music, the February 15 show will feature Grammy award-winners and alternative hip hop group Arrested Development.
In addition, “African Ancestry Radio” will feature discussions on how a person’s roots influence personality, who they are and how they act. Each show will include at least one celebrity guest who has previously taken the tests and whose African ancestry will be revealed during the broadcast.
“‘African Ancestry Radio’ promises to be enlightening, empowering, and inspirational for SiriusXM listeners across the country,” said Dave Gorab, Vice President and General Manager, Talk Programming, SiriusXM. “We are pleased to present this exclusive series as part of our special programming commemorating Black History Month.”
After the broadcast, “African Ancestry Radio” will be available on SiriusXM On Demand for subscribers listening via the SiriusXM Internet Radio App for smartphones and other mobile devices or online at siriusxm.com. Visit www.siriusxm.com/ondemand for more information.
Gina Paige is co-founder of African Ancestry, Inc., pioneering a new way of tracing African lineage using genetics. Paige resides in Washington, D.C. and holds a degree in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Posts published in “Entertainment”
Ava DuVernay has signed on to direct CBS’s “For Justice” drama pilot, Variety has learned.
From “Law & Order” veteran Rene Balcer, who’s serving as writer and executive producer, the pilot follows a female FBI agent working in the Criminal Section of the Department of Civil Rights Division who finds herself caught between her radical real family and her professional family.
The project, based on James Patterson’s novel “The Thomas Berryman Number,” also has Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, James Patterson, Bill Robinson and Leopoldo Gout attached to exec produce with Balcer. Berry Welsh will co-exec produce. CBS TV is the studio.
DuVernay is also creating an original television series for OWN with Oprah Winfrey, based on the novel “Queen Sugar.”
article by Elizabeth Wagmeister via variety.com
From “Law & Order” veteran Rene Balcer, who’s serving as writer and executive producer, the pilot follows a female FBI agent working in the Criminal Section of the Department of Civil Rights Division who finds herself caught between her radical real family and her professional family.
The project, based on James Patterson’s novel “The Thomas Berryman Number,” also has Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, James Patterson, Bill Robinson and Leopoldo Gout attached to exec produce with Balcer. Berry Welsh will co-exec produce. CBS TV is the studio.
DuVernay is also creating an original television series for OWN with Oprah Winfrey, based on the novel “Queen Sugar.”
article by Elizabeth Wagmeister via variety.com
As centennial commemorations of DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” gear up, a new book by historian Cara Caddoo proves African Americans helped invent the movies a decade before the first Hollywood film. Published by Harvard University Press, “Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life” uncovers the forgotten history of black inventors, filmmakers, and exhibitors.
“A lot of people assume that African Americans just followed in the footsteps of white filmmakers,” says Caddoo, an Assistant Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, “That’s really a whitewashing of American film history.”
Years before the 1915 debut of Griffith’s pro-KKK film, which is widely credited for inaugurating “modern American cinema,” African Americans produced their own films and built their own theaters. Caddoo explains that this began in the 1890s–more than a decade before Hollywood, and long before the rise of better-known black filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux.
The first African American films featured themes like the “American Negro and the Negro abroad.” In “The Devil’s Cook Kitchen,” a minister named H. Charles Pope used movies to highlight black contributions to American history, and to explain the “26 sins” involved in dancing.
Some black filmmakers were former slaves, others just a generation removed. Faced with racial discrimination and shoestring budgets, these black film pioneers relied on their wit. Segregation limited African Americans’ access to public space so they turned black churches, lodges, and schools into motion picture theaters during off hours.
“Envisioning Freedom” is packed with colorful characters such as Fleetwood Walker, the first–and last–major league baseball player before Jackie Robinson. Caddoo writes that Walker became an inventor and traveling motion picture exhibitor after his baseball career. One of his most important inventions was an alarm system that enabled film projectionists to switch seamlessly between reels of film.
When “Birth of a Nation” debuted, African Americans launched the first mass black protest movement of the twentieth century. By that time, motion pictures were deeply integrated into black life. African Americans had produced films and used them to fundraise, build businesses, construct theaters, and socialize in an era of racial segregation. Caddoo explains, “They were fighting to reclaim a form of popular culture that they had helped create. Tens of thousands of African Americans participated–housewives, gangsters, ministers, and schoolchildren, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, and from the Panama Canal to Canada.”
Pick up a copy of the book via Amazon here.
article by Tambay A. Obenson via blogs.indiewire.com
Empire, the hip-hop drama that stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, has broken a ratings record that stood for more than 23 years, according to Entertainment Weekly.
The show is averaging 14 million viewers and a strong 5.6 rating among adults 18-19, so far for the first two weeks of the season with total DVR data available, the report notes. Fox says the show is the only primetime scripted series to grow in total viewers over each of its first five telecasts since at least 1991 and is the strongest hour-long show this season, the news outlet reports.
While the record may have stood for longer than that, the report notes, Nielsen revised its measuring system 23 years ago “and so comparisons can only be properly calculated that far back.”
Further to its credit, Empire is technically the only series—not just scripted—to have earned such an accomplishment, the entertainment news site writes. ABC’s game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire grew through each of its first five telecasts in 1999, but they were technically considered “specials” when the show first started instead of regular episodes, according to the news outlet.
article by Lynette Holloway via theroot.com
article by Lynette Holloway via theroot.com
Before the show even started, a handful of winners have been announced for this year’s 57th Annual Grammy Awards.
Beyonce, who has had a record-breaking 52 nominations, took home an early award in the Best Surround Sound Album category for her self-titled 2013 release. Beyonce has now won 18 Grammy’s but has yet to take home the Album of the Year title, an award she’s up for later tonight.
Meanwhile, Pharrell won another Grammy for himself in the form of Best Music Video with his wildly popular “Happy” visuals.
Ahead of the ceremony and performances, check out an early list of the winners and nominees below:
Album of the Year
Beck, Morning Phase
Beyonce, Beyonce
Ed Sheeran, x
Sam Smith, In the Lonely Hour
Pharrell Williams, G I R L
Best New Artist
Bastille
Iggy Azalea
Brandy Clark
Haim
Sam Smith
Record of the Year
“Fancy,” Iggy Azalea ft. Charli XCX
“Chandelier,” Sia
“Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” Sam Smith
“Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift
“All About That Bass,” Meghan Trainor
Song of the Year
“Chandelier,” Sia
“All About That Bass,” Meghan Trainor
“Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift
“Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” Sam Smith
“Take Me to Church,” Hozier
Best Rap Album
The New Classic, Iggy Azalea
Because the Internet, Childish Gambino
Nobody’s Smiling, Common
The Marshall Mathers LP2, Eminem
Oxymoron, ScHoolboy Q
Blacc Hollywood, Wiz Khalifa
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
“Fancy,” Iggy Azalea ft. Charli XCX
“A Sky Full of Stars,” Coldplay
“Say Something,” A Great Big World ft. Christina Aguilera
“Bang Bang,” Ariana Grande, Jessie J & Nicki Minaj
“Dark Horse,” Katy Perry ft. Juicy J
Best Rap Performance
“3005,” Childish Gambino
“0 to 100/The Catch Up,” Drake
“Rap God,” Eminem
“i,” Kendrick Lamar
“All I Need Is You,” Lecrae
Best Alternative Music Album
This Is All Yours, alt-J
Reflektor, Arcade Fire
Melophobia, Cage the Elephant
St. Vincent, St. Vincent
Lazaretto, Jack White
Last night’s NAACP Image Awards was nothing but pure glam. Celebrities slayed on the red carpet while host Anthony Anderson kept the crowd laughing all night. But it was the winners who had us buzzing.
After being snubbed in the Academy Award race, Selma was the clear-cut winner in the film categories, snagging the award for Outstanding Motion Picture, Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture (David Oyelowo), Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (Common) and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture (Carmen Ejogo).
“We did this movie because we wanted to tell their story—our story,” said Selma producer Oprah Winfrey in her acceptance speech.
Meanwhile, “Blackish” swept the television categories, taking home all the top honors for comedy series, beating out shows like “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Lies.” The show won Best Comedy Series as well as the awards for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series (Anthony Anderson), Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series (Tracee Ellis Ross), Oustanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy (Laurence Fishburne) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Yara Shahidi).
Shonda Rhimes‘ “How to Get Away with Murder” won for Outstanding Drama Series, and its star, Viola Davis, won for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series.
In the music categories, Pharrell Williams won for Outstanding Male Artist while Beyoncé won for Outstanding Female Artist. Taraji P. Henson took home the Image Award for Oustanding Actress in a Motion Picture for her role in No Good Deed, and Belle won for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture.
For a full list, visit www.naacpimageawards.net.
article by Taylor Lewis via essence.com
Kicking off today, Friday, February 6, 2015, is a must-attend series, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center (NYC), titled “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968–1986” – from the opener, Kathleen Collins‘ stately 1982 feature “Losing Ground” (read my review of the film here); to Ayoka Chenzira‘s humorous, though inciting short “black hair” travelogue, “Hair Piece A Film for Nappy-Headed People;” Camille Billops‘ devastating documentary on a young black woman’s struggles to come to terms with her physically abusive father (dead at the time of the making of the film) as well as a mother, abused herself, unable to protect her children in 1982’s “Suzanne Suzanne,” and more.
A series programmed by Michelle Materre and Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Jake Perlin, co-presented by Creatively Speaking, other titles included in the program, which some of you would be familiar with, include Bill Gunn‘s seminal “Ganja & Hess” (a film that Spike Lee *reinterpreted* in his latest work, “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus”); William Greaves’ instructive “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm;” another Bill Gunn film, “Personal Problems” (which came after “Ganja”), the work of cinéma-vérité, capturing a middle class black family in crisis; St Clair Bourne’s intimate documentary capturing Amiri Baraka‘s trial and conviction for “resisting arrest” despite allegations of police harassment, in “In Motion: Amiri Baraka;” and much, much, much more.
Of course, given the period and city covered, the early work of Spike Lee is well represented, with “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads” and “She’s Gotta Have It,” both scheduled to screen.
Tickets for this must-attend series of rare screenings can be purchased online here.
It’s quite exhaustive, so I strongly encourage you to take full advantage, because you may never get another opportunity quite like this again, or anytime soon, after this run ends. Check out the full lineup here.
In the meantime, here’s a just-released trailer for the series:
article by Tambay A.Benson via blogs.indiewire.com
Years of hard work and a reality show later, Cordell Broadus has officially announced that he’ll be playing football for the UCLA Bruins.
Ranked as the #14 Wide Receiver prospect in the country, the son of superstar rapper Snoop Dogg will join a UCLA program that made him an offer since he was just a ninth grader. He chose the Bruins over LSU, Arizona State and his father’s favorite school, USC.
The Long Beach native moved his son to Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, to give Cordell the best opportunity to grow athletically and academically. And with NFL regulations stating that a student-athlete must be at least three years removed from high school, fans will have the delight of watching the standout recruit make plays for several years to come.
article by @TheKidSkoob via theurbandaily.com
HBO has greenlight a pilot from “The Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore and YouTube star Issa Rae, Variety has confirmed.
“Insecure,” starring Rae, is a half-hour comedy about the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern-day African-American.
The project was previously in development at HBO back in 2013, before Wilmore landed “The Nightly Show” gig with Comedy Central.
Wilmore and Rae wrote the pilot. Wilmore is set to serve as executive producer, with Rae co-executive producing.
Rae has garnered over 180,000 subscribers and 20 million views on YouTube with the success of her award-winning hit Web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.”
article by Elizabeth Wagmeister via Variety.com
Superstar singer Diana Ross has inked April dates for the first nine performances of her new mini-residency contract at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Soon to follow in this new entertainment lineup set for the former “Phantom — The Las Vegas Spectacular” theater will be Janet Jackson, Lionel Richie and Ricky Martin.
Diana, named “Most Successful Female Vocalist of All Time,” takes the stage for her new show “The Essential Diana Ross: Some Memories Never Fade” as of April 1. Tickets are on sale for three weekends of shows April 1, 3-4, 7-8, 10-11, 15 and 17-18. To purchase, click here.
She will include songs from her remarkable, nearly five-decade career that made music-history milestones and a significant contribution to pop culture music of the 20th century. She’s promising Motown classics “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to pop favorites “I’m Coming Out” and hits including “Endless Love.”