Happy Music Monday! Halloween season is here again at Good Black News, and your Afroclectic ambassador of sweet grooves is back.
As your sonic chauffeur, I am delighted to share this seasonal playlist to help you celebrate All Hallows’ Eve.
This 5-hour collection features creepy soul, reggae, blues, jazz, and soundtracks covers an array of dark themes like Poison, Evil Ways, zombies, vampires, and Frankenstein.
You will find Halloween standards by Ray Parker Jr., Eartha Kitt, and Michael Jackson, alongside newer tracks from The Womack Sisters and Gorillaz.
Whether you are decorating, trick-or-treating, handing out candy, or hosting a party, or just out and about in those Halloween streets this playlist will set the perfect mood for the season.
Take good care, everyone. As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.
It’s Music Monday and Halloween here at Good Black News! It’s your friend and selector, the groove conductor, Marlon West. I’ve returned once more during this Season of the Witch with another collection.
I am just back from a screening and discussion with Ryan Coogler and part of his creative team behind SINNERS. It was the fifth viewing for me, in whole or in part.
I saw it opening day laser projected, two weeks later on 70mm IMAX, streamed it twice, once with a sista in the lower right corner offering Black ASL, and today a 70mm print projected at the Directors Guild of America‘s theater with a very diverse and reactive crowd early on a Sunday morning. I was delighted to run into our GBN Editor-In-Chief Lori Lakin Hutcherson and her mother at the same screening.
As any of you that enjoy my Music Monday playlist knows, I love me some Halloween. This is at least the fifth All-Hallows Eve collection I’ve done for Good Black News.
The cinematic juggernaut that is SINNERS is a good reminder of just how much the blues has dealt with scares both supernatural and real-world based.
From Robert Johnson’s mythic trip the the crossroads to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground,” the blues has provided its share of eerie moments. Bo Diddley’s iconic ‘Who Do You Love” opens with following boasts:
I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire Used a cobra snake for a necktie Got a brand new house on the roadside Made from rattlesnake hide Got a brand new chimney made on top Made out of a human skull
Oh, that’s a Halloween song, all right! Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, RL Burnside, Norma Tanega, Gary Clark Jr., and so many more purveyors of the blues are present for this Halloween collection.
Whether your plans include handing out candy to hobgoblins of all ages, chillin’ with friends, or kickin’ at home with that porch light out, here is another autumnal offer to enjoy during this Halloween Season.
Happy Music Monday, you all. It’s your pal and musician marshal is back with another dose of fine tunes.
After Fruitvale Station, Rocky spin-off/reboot Creed, Black Panther and its sequel, Wakanda Forever, Ryan Coogler has proven himself one of the most masterful filmmakers working today.
Though Sinners, which arrived in theaters three weeks ago, is his first film not derived from real life or other properties.
Michael B. Jordan in the dual role of 1930s gangster twins Smoke and Stack, leads a charming ensemble of characters in a blistering, sexy southern gothic horror. It is a blues-infused vampire flick in which the music flows as freely as R-rated gore.
This month’s offering celebrates Sinners’ soundtrack featuring Miles Caton, Alice Smith, Rod Wave, co-star Hailee Steinfeld and others.
There are also offerings from Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, Raphael Saadiq, Bobby Rush and the legendary Buddy Guy, who also appears in the film. (If you haven’t seen the film yet, stay put for the poignant mid-credits sequence.) There are passages of the original score, from Coogler’s frequent collaborator, Ludwig Göransson.
Of course, I have included songs and performances that surely inspired Coogler and his creative team. There are songs by Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Koko Taylor and so many others.
The gospel blues track “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson is one of 27 pieces of music sent to space in 1977 on the “Voyager Golden Record” to represent the rich diversity of life on Earth. I can’t think of a better example of the cultural import of the blues.
I’m thrilled to offer this playlist celebrating the blues’ enduring impact, and the film that celebrates Black community, tenacity, and ownership.
See you all next month, and as always: Stay safe, sane, and kind.
