“It’s better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.”
— Jackie Joyner-Kersee, World-Class heptathlete, long-jumper and three-time Olympic Gold Medalist
Good Black News
Doug E. Fresh and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during the 2011 Soul Train Awards at The Fox Theatre on November 17, 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images)
When hip-hop icon Doug E Fresh first graced the mic, he simply wanted to entertain the masses by doing what he loved. After building his career and subsequent fame, he decided that it was best to use his success to educate and empower others. As a father of five, and vegetarian for nearly 25 years, the 45-year-old believes that good health is essential for a fulfilling life.
“Health has always been an important thing to me. I exercise and try to take care of myself, and drink a lot of water! And I push that to my kids so that they can carry on that same energy,” said Doug E.
So when he partnered with Dr. Olajide Williams, a neurologist from New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, to join in the fight against childhood obesity, he merged two very important components of his life: hip-hop and health. The partnership produced Hip Hop Public Health, a program that uses hip hop as a way to educate African-American and Latino children about obesity and the resulting chronic and acute diseases. HHPH engages and informs students through music, videos, comic books and live shows that tour schools. As the program’s Vice President of Entertainment, Doug E. stated that he “felt like it was necessary to take what people love, which is hip-hop, and use it as tool to get kids motivated.”
Read the rest of this story on Ebony.com.
via Doug E. Fresh uses hip-hop to teach healthy habits to black and Latino youth with Hip Hop Public Health | theGrio.
In 1964, John Coltrane moved from Queens, N.Y., to a brick ranch house on a 31/2 acre wooded lot in the quiet suburb of Dix Hills. This bucolic setting — 40 miles east of the city — is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a musician creating the virtuosic jazz that Coltrane is famous for. “I believe the solitude and the beauty of Long Island gave him something he had not had or experienced before,” he says. “Clearly it affected the way he conceived.”
But Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane, who was herself a noted jazz pianist and harpist, says the woods were part of his father’s creative process.
Ravi Coltrane was born in 1965 and lived in the Dix Hills house until he was six.
“This is my sister’s room over here. Michelle — this is her bedroom,” he says. “This was the boys’ room back here; this is the room I shared with my two brothers, John Jr. and Oran.”‘
But, Ravi Coltrane says, not all is as it was: The Coltrane Home in Dix Hills has fallen into disrepair in the 45 years after his father’s death.
Preserving The Property
Many, including Ravi Coltrane, are trying to preserve the historic property. The driving force behind the effort is Steve Fulgoni, a music store owner, amateur saxophonist and a huge Coltrane fan. He first visited the house in 2004.
“I was looking around, and I looked in the corner, which I think was in this room, and all there was was one newspaper,” Fulgoni says. “I picked up the newspaper, and I looked at the date, and the date of the newspaper was July 17, which was the anniversary of his death. And I said to myself, ‘I need to do something.'”
That same year, he founded The Friends of the Coltrane Home. Fulgoni petitioned the town of Huntington, N.Y., to declare the site a historic landmark, and two years later, to purchase the property and designate it a public park.
To read the rest of this article or listen to the story, click here: Making A Home For John Coltrane’s Legacy : NPR.
In 1964, John Coltrane moved from Queens, N.Y., to a brick ranch house on a 31/2 acre wooded lot in the quiet suburb of Dix Hills. This bucolic setting — 40 miles east of the city — is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a musician creating the virtuosic jazz that Coltrane is famous for. “I believe the solitude and the beauty of Long Island gave him something he had not had or experienced before,” he says. “Clearly it affected the way he conceived.”
But Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane, who was herself a noted jazz pianist and harpist, says the woods were part of his father’s creative process.
Ravi Coltrane was born in 1965 and lived in the Dix Hills house until he was six.
“This is my sister’s room over here. Michelle — this is her bedroom,” he says. “This was the boys’ room back here; this is the room I shared with my two brothers, John Jr. and Oran.”‘
But, Ravi Coltrane says, not all is as it was: The Coltrane Home in Dix Hills has fallen into disrepair in the 45 years after his father’s death.
Preserving The Property
Many, including Ravi Coltrane, are trying to preserve the historic property. The driving force behind the effort is Steve Fulgoni, a music store owner, amateur saxophonist and a huge Coltrane fan. He first visited the house in 2004.
“I was looking around, and I looked in the corner, which I think was in this room, and all there was was one newspaper,” Fulgoni says. “I picked up the newspaper, and I looked at the date, and the date of the newspaper was July 17, which was the anniversary of his death. And I said to myself, ‘I need to do something.'”
That same year, he founded The Friends of the Coltrane Home. Fulgoni petitioned the town of Huntington, N.Y., to declare the site a historic landmark, and two years later, to purchase the property and designate it a public park.
To read the rest of this article or listen to the story, click here: Making A Home For John Coltrane’s Legacy : NPR.
“Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.”
— Benjamin Banneker, self-educated inventor, mathematician, surveyor and architect
They drive their kids to swim team practice at 5 a.m. And bring them back to the pool at night for more .The Kingfish parents buy everything in orange, the team color. Sandals, shoes, purses, pants, hats. And they wear all of it, even to practice. They create spreadsheets, newsletters, bar graphs and a Web site, which began counting down the days and hours to the first swim practice sometime back in February. They even have a team sandwich — The King Fishwich. Five years ago, the Kingfish swam in the least competitive division in the Prince-Mont Swim League. “We’d set out a table by the Giant, trying to recruit swimmers,” said Calvin Holmes, intense swim parent extraordinaire and president of the swim club. “And people would just walk by us. Or think we were selling fish.”
You can call Awol Erizku’s art history-inflected photographs whatever you want — just don’t call them “urban.” “I hate when people label my work urban,” he says. “Just because it’s African American subjects or people of color it’s not urban.” His recent Renaissance-inspired portraits at Hasted Kraeutlerreplace the stiff aristocrats of centuries past with young New Yorkers wearing Louis Vuitton, Versace, and sometimes nothing at all. The pieces are poised and precisely lit while the subjects stand alone against a black background, boldly staring directly into the camera. Works like “Girl with a Bamboo Earring,” “Boy Holding Grapes,” and “Lady with a Pitbull” take direct inspiration from Vermeer, Caravaggio, and Da Vinci.
In the past two years, the 24-year-old photographer has graduated from Cooper Union, been accepted to Yale’s MFA program, and been picked up by a Chelsea gallery. His portraits of New York’s young black creative elite have made an impression on big players in the industry (Glenn Fuhrman of the FLAG Art Foundation was an early champion of his work), and this month he has two solo shows in New York — one at Hasted Kraeutler closing July 20 and the other at Rivington Design House Gallery opening July 19.
Erizku was born in Ethiopia, but grew up in the Bronx. He started taking photographs seriously in college after an internship with David LaChappelle. In both his gallery work and on his very active Tumblr, Erikzu is working to insert a young black voice onto the white walls of the art world. “There are not that many colored people in the galleries that I went to or the museums that I went to,” he said. “I was just like, ‘when I become an artist I have to put my two cents in this world.’”
Erizku updates his Tumblr, called “Thank You! Come Again,” nearly every day. The Tumblr photos are more relaxed than his gallery work, foregoing perfect lighting and precise posture for silly, playful poses against a plain white wall. Everyone who visits his studio is photographed (including this reporter). The Tumblr photographs document Erizku’s extensive network of fashionable friends, people he calls “movers and shakers in the city.” Street Etiquette style bloggers Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs, members of hip hop collective A$AP Mob, A$AP Rocky and A$AP Bari, and recently Mos Def have all made appearances.
While Erizku primarily photographs people of color, he expressed frustration with the way his work is sometimes described by critics, and is irked by frequent comparisons to painter Kehinde Wiley. While he respects Wiley’s work, he feels that they have little in common besides African American subjects. “Whenever I make something I want it to be compared to Andy [Warhol] or to Richard Avedon,” he said. While Kehinde Wiley also portrays young black men in classicizing portraits, the aesthetic fundamentals of their practices are drastically different. Erizku’s work feels more honest, more genuine. He mostly takes photographs of friends and his erudite yet easy-going look onto a specific scene of downtown creatives is what makes the work original. Where Kehinde’s paintings have taken on a manufactured character, Erizku’s photographs feel warmly personal.
His big ambitions, however, will be temporarily put on hold when he heads to Yale this fall. “Making this move is a bit drastic because this will be the first time I’m leaving the city to settle somewhere else,” he said. At Yale he wants to develop his sculpture; he says he’s interested in working with readymades. It will be interesting to see how someone so embroiled in the New York scene will fair in the much quieter New Haven. Erizku, however, is excited for the time away and says he is “up for the challenge.” We think so too.
“Awol Erizku” is on view at Hasted Kraeutler, 527 West 24th Street, New York, June 14-July 22, 2012; “Thank You Come Again!” is on view at Rivington Design House, 129 Rivington Street, New York, July 19-Sept. 6, 2012. To see Awol Erizku’s photos, click on the slide show.
article by Ashton Cooper via artinfo.com
You can call Awol Erizku’s art history-inflected photographs whatever you want — just don’t call them “urban.” “I hate when people label my work urban,” he says. “Just because it’s African American subjects or people of color it’s not urban.” His recent Renaissance-inspired portraits at Hasted Kraeutlerreplace the stiff aristocrats of centuries past with young New Yorkers wearing Louis Vuitton, Versace, and sometimes nothing at all. The pieces are poised and precisely lit while the subjects stand alone against a black background, boldly staring directly into the camera. Works like “Girl with a Bamboo Earring,” “Boy Holding Grapes,” and “Lady with a Pitbull” take direct inspiration from Vermeer, Caravaggio, and Da Vinci.
In the past two years, the 24-year-old photographer has graduated from Cooper Union, been accepted to Yale’s MFA program, and been picked up by a Chelsea gallery. His portraits of New York’s young black creative elite have made an impression on big players in the industry (Glenn Fuhrman of the FLAG Art Foundation was an early champion of his work), and this month he has two solo shows in New York — one at Hasted Kraeutler closing July 20 and the other at Rivington Design House Gallery opening July 19.
Erizku was born in Ethiopia, but grew up in the Bronx. He started taking photographs seriously in college after an internship with David LaChappelle. In both his gallery work and on his very active Tumblr, Erikzu is working to insert a young black voice onto the white walls of the art world. “There are not that many colored people in the galleries that I went to or the museums that I went to,” he said. “I was just like, ‘when I become an artist I have to put my two cents in this world.’”
Erizku updates his Tumblr, called “Thank You! Come Again,” nearly every day. The Tumblr photos are more relaxed than his gallery work, foregoing perfect lighting and precise posture for silly, playful poses against a plain white wall. Everyone who visits his studio is photographed (including this reporter). The Tumblr photographs document Erizku’s extensive network of fashionable friends, people he calls “movers and shakers in the city.” Street Etiquette style bloggers Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs, members of hip hop collective A$AP Mob, A$AP Rocky and A$AP Bari, and recently Mos Def have all made appearances.
While Erizku primarily photographs people of color, he expressed frustration with the way his work is sometimes described by critics, and is irked by frequent comparisons to painter Kehinde Wiley. While he respects Wiley’s work, he feels that they have little in common besides African American subjects. “Whenever I make something I want it to be compared to Andy [Warhol] or to Richard Avedon,” he said. While Kehinde Wiley also portrays young black men in classicizing portraits, the aesthetic fundamentals of their practices are drastically different. Erizku’s work feels more honest, more genuine. He mostly takes photographs of friends and his erudite yet easy-going look onto a specific scene of downtown creatives is what makes the work original. Where Kehinde’s paintings have taken on a manufactured character, Erizku’s photographs feel warmly personal.
His big ambitions, however, will be temporarily put on hold when he heads to Yale this fall. “Making this move is a bit drastic because this will be the first time I’m leaving the city to settle somewhere else,” he said. At Yale he wants to develop his sculpture; he says he’s interested in working with readymades. It will be interesting to see how someone so embroiled in the New York scene will fair in the much quieter New Haven. Erizku, however, is excited for the time away and says he is “up for the challenge.” We think so too.
“Awol Erizku” is on view at Hasted Kraeutler, 527 West 24th Street, New York, June 14-July 22, 2012; “Thank You Come Again!” is on view at Rivington Design House, 129 Rivington Street, New York, July 19-Sept. 6, 2012. To see Awol Erizku’s photos, click on the slide show.
article by Ashton Cooper via artinfo.com
The “2012 Nation’s Best Advocates: 40 Lawyers Under 40” were honored by IMPACT and the National Bar Association (the largest network of African-American attorneys and judges) on Sunday. The event aims to recognize talented individuals (age 40 and under) within the African American legal community who have achieved prominence and distinction, professionally and philanthropically.
The “2012 Nation’s Best Advocates: 40 Lawyers Under 40” were honored by IMPACT and the National Bar Association (the largest network of African-American attorneys and judges) on Sunday. The event aims to recognize talented individuals (age 40 and under) within the African American legal community who have achieved prominence and distinction, professionally and philanthropically.