I watched a lot of the Olympics.  And honestly, I sat through most of it just to see the track & field.  More to the point, while I’m happy for and proud of Gabby Douglas, nothing made me happier than watching Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight, and Carmelita Jeter break a 32-year-old record by over 3/4 of a second.  That’s incredible given that sprint contests are decided on hundredths of seconds.  The old record dates back to 1980 when the East Germans dominated the sprints.  Some said it was through performance-enhancing drugs. We’ll never know.  The important thing to remember is that these four women did the damn thing and left us with some iconic images, such as Jeter (above) pointing at the clock.

photo credit: Michael Steele/Getty

photo credit: Frederic Haslin/Corbis

Additional links:

• ESPN coverage of the relay
• NY Times coverage

Some photos from around the Web of Gabrielle Christina Victoria “Gabby” Douglas, the first African American woman to win a Gold medal in the Olympics all-around gymnastics competition.  Congrats, Gabby, for making us all proud!

Additional links:

• Gabrielle Douglas on Wikipedia
• NY Times: Gabby Douglas’s Long Journey to Gymnastics Gold
• Gabrielle Douglas official

I haven’t seen The Help.  Don’t plan to, either, especially since Toure has put himself at great risk to do so for us. Thank you, brotha.

That said, it’s really great to see this, especially after all of the roles she’s been given where she has to look dowdy. No, Viola really is a beauty and it’s great on a number of levels to see her get this kind of glam treatment.  And it doesn’t hurt that she’s been imaged by the great fashion photographer Ruven Afanador.

See the rest of the shoot via the LA Times Magazine here.

credit: Daniele Tamagni, “The Playboys of Bacongo” 2008

This looks to be a very cool photography exhibit.  Here’s a brief description:

Africolor – the exhibition – looks at the connections in photography between Africa, color, and color photography. While Africa as a subject has attracted and inspired photographers since the invention of photography, because of the obvious financial and technical issues involved –
photographing Africa in the 19th century was largely a European endeavor. By the middle of the 20th century, however, photography both as a business and a means of artistic expression was beginning to flourish across the African continent.

With the advent of color photography and in particular with the acceptance of color photography into the mainstream of fine art in the 1980s, the vivid colors and bright light of the continent seemed to serve as inspiration for a wide range of photography from the indigenous to the imagined and from documentary to staged. Celebrating the diversity of color photographic expression, Africolor presents groupings of work that are a compelling (but by no means comprehensive) sampling.

Photographers included in the exhibition include Italian photojournalist Daniele Tamagni; renowned Malian photographer Malick Sidibe; Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel; South African Lolo Veleko; Martin Parr, known for his “trademark acid color palette”; Samuel Fosso, described as “the African Cindy Sherman”; New Yorker Mickalene Thomas; and street artist JR.

credit: Ruud van Empel, “World 21″, 2006

credit: Mickalene Thomas, “Nollywood 11,” 2010

The exhibition is on display at

Danziger Projects
527 West 23rd Street
NYC 10011

Images courtesy of Danizger Projects.  Thanks, Carly!

@koklarock

From Saturday’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner, chillin’ even as he knew a Seal Team Six was about to make a move on Bin Laden.

But the real reason for this picture: Michelle is–to quote my man Kokayi–BANGIN’!

That is all.

Everybody say, “Yeah Yeah!”

Fela (above in a photo by Bernard Matussiere) would’ve been 72 on October 15.  In honor of his birthday, there will be celebrations–Felabrations!–around the country throughout the month of October.  Here are the dates and venues for this year’s events:

10.13.10 – The Shrine – Chicago, IL
10.13.10 – Recess at Somar Bar & Lounge – Oakland, CA
10.14.10 – (Le) Poisson Rouge – New York, NY
10.14.10 – Yoruba Dance Sessions – Oakland, CA
10.14.10 – Afro Funke @ Zanzibar – Los Angeles, CA
10.16.10 – 595 North Event Venue – Atlanta, GA
10.21.10 – Shrine World Music Venue – New York, NY
10.23.10 – Malverde – Austin, TX
10.25.10 – The Knitting Factory – Brooklyn, NY
10.28.10 – Bossa Lounge – Washington, D.C.
10.28.10 – MilkyWay at the Brewery – Boston, MA
10.29.10 – Worldbeat Cultural Center – San Diego, CA

More info on the Felabrations here.

Tamra Davis’ film Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is an affecting documentary on the rise and fall of the artworld superstar.  Davis was a friend of Basquiat’s who started filming interviews with him as their friendship developed.  She’d amassed a significant amount of footage by the time of his death but, as she says, she put the film in a drawer and didn’t think about it for many years.  What you get is wonderful interview footage of with Basquiat, as well as many of the people he was close to in those years of his ascent and decline.  And, the film is well worth seeing, if only for the amount of his work that is shown.

But I don’t think there’s ever a way to watch a film about Jean-Michel Basquiat and not feel that impending sense of dread.  I certainly remember feeling that while watching Jeffrey Wright in Julian Schnabel’s biopic, and I definitely felt it while watching one, too. The whole experience of watching the film, for me, is poignant. Usually, it’s because we recognize potential that is smothered by death at a young age.  In this case, it’s watching him produce so much of his prodigious body of work and wanting him to be around to enjoy the acclaim that really followed him after his death that, yet again, I found myself hoping against reason that somehow this story would turn out differently and he wouldn’t be dead by age 27.

Of course, I can’t help but feel the inevitable even more sharply because I watch the movie as a black man.  And I think the film does a great job of tackling the race issue head-on.  But, the fact was, there seemed to be very few people around Basquiat who cared about him beyond what he could produce and what they could profit from.  He had a meteoric rise: In two years, he’d gone from living hand-to-mouth on the street and crashing at different people’s apartments to an art world sensation.  He had no support system when things really got deep.  No one to pull him back from the drugs.  And by then, there was the pressure to continue to produce masterpieces.  I’m not quoting it exactly, but he’s said to have remarked, “They say the drugs are killing me, and I should stop.  But then the works suffers and they’ll talk about me.”  Yeah, it was a vicious and fickle environment.

There was a scene in Schnabel’s film where, towards the end, Basquiat, very much down on his luck, fighting his drug addiction—and you can see it in the splotches on his face—visits Schnabel at the SoHo loft he lives in.  Schnabel’s paintings are all over the place.  Things look comfortable, and they were.  Basquiat looks as if he hasn’t eaten in a while, so Schnabel fixes him a plate of pasta.  Schnabel’s daughter, I think, comes in, he says something to her and pats her on the heads, and then she trots aways.  The contrast between the two men’s situations was always painful.  After all, Schnabel was, at one point, an art world darling, a superstar in his own right.  But these two ended up in very different places.  For all the excesses, the partying, the drugs, I always felt there was probably a community around Schnabel that would never have let him slip over the edge.  And he knew it.  There he was, sitting securely up there in that loft, with his family and his presumption and his privilege intact.  I hated Julian Schnabel for a while after seeing that.

I think about Basquiat’s relationship with his father.  Here’s the classic story of a young man who desperately wants his father’s approval.  And I don’t know enough to say that his dad unduly withheld it.  But his father was an accountant, a successful one at that and a Haitian immigrant.  I can only guess that he had a serious work ethic and believed in propriety and comporting oneself appropriately.  In the Davis film, one of Basquiat’s friends tells of a time, again towards the end, when he took all the friends he’d known before he became famous out to lunch.  Turns out his dad was at the same restaurant entertaining some clients.  Jean-Michel went over to say hi—and it’s not clear what the exchange was—but his friend says he came back with is tail between his legs, utterly deflated.  Maybe his dad really dressed him down over of the way he looked because of the drugs.

I sat there in the theater wondering how I would’ve reacted if, instead of Basquiat and his dad, that was me and my son Tyler.  Perhaps, after the art world turned on him and feeling beat up by the world, maybe he just needed his dad’s acceptance and maybe that would’ve made a difference, and he might not have taken the heroin that killed him.  This is all speculation.  I’m not blaming his dad for Basquiat’s death.  But, I’m a parent, too, and I understand how children can bring out your darker emotions.

But I keep coming back to this whole thing about a support system and being moored.  He went places that no one in his family had been and achieved a level of success that not even his friends like Fab 5 Freddy could really relate to.  He was the one, and he was definitely out there alone.

You could say Basquiat’s is a cautionary tale, but it’s not.  It’s just tragic. And it hurts.  Yes, there’s a sense of wonder at his abilities and his vision—Davis shows a lot of his work throughout the film and gets a lot of heavyweights to talk about it, which is great.  But, when you combine that sense of wonder with an understanding of the outsized talent that was lost so young, I can’t help but mourn that Radiant Child.

In New York City, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child runs through Tuesday, August 3 at the Film Forum. Check out the other cities it will play in here.

It was a great night of music.  The last time I’d seen Tamar-kali perform was last November at Indiana University’s black rock conference.  She was very good then, but was great on Friday.

What pushed it over the top was, simply, Tamar. Perhaps it was a sense of relief and accomplishment at having Black Bottom finally out in the world.  Maybe it was the nearly 300 people who showed up help celebrate the album’s release.  Whatever it was, she was engaging, charismatic, funny, but still clearly in charge of her voice, her band and us, the audience.

I think we’d all be disappointed if it were any other way.

Cool, too, to have The Roots’ Kirk Douglas join the band for “Your Girl” and then stick around to accompany Toshi Reagon and Alice Smith, who joined Tamar in a cover of Betty Davis’s “Game Is My Middle Name”.

Thanks to our Ngozi and the folks at Society HAE for giving me a heads up on this.  Check it out:

This exhibition seeks to pay tribute to one of the African Diaspora’s
most influential living ancestors as well as critique the complexity of
his persona. Life After Death: A Multi-Media Analysis of the Persona
that Was/Is Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a visual homage to a musical genius
and perhaps one of contemporary history’s most powerful protest artists.

Also including never before seen photography of Fela in '77 during
FESTAC and at the Shrine with individuals such as Haki Madhubiti shot by
Marilyn Nance.

The opening reception is Thursday, June 10.  If you're interested in going, you must RSVP to slewis@cccadi.org
or 212.307.7420 ext. 2008.

The public programs associated with the exhibit are as follows:

6.19 Center Saturdays: Music No Get Enemy | 1 p.m.
6.20 Fela’s Funk and Trunk Shopping Extravaganza | 3 – 8 p.m.
6.29 Artist Talk | 6:30 p.m.
7.18 Gallery Tour and FELA! On Broadway |
7.20 Film Screening: Music is the Weapon | 6: 30 p.m.

Additional link:

• The Caribbean Cultural Center official site

"So many of us grew up knowing Lena Horne," I said to my wife Bridgett earlier tonight.  "Several generations grew up on Lena Horne," she replied.  She was 92 years old when she passed away yesterday. Pretty incredible, right?

Here's a quick sample of some of the writing that's been done about her today.

First, Thembisa Mshaka, journalist and author of Put Your Dreams First: Handle Your [entertainment] Business, wrote this:

Groundbreaking actor, dancer, and vocal stylist Lena Horne made her
transition at the age of 92. Lena Horne, with her smoldering voice,
lithe dancer’s body, and flawless beauty, is the Mother of Black
Hollywood: its glamour; its contradictions, its fighting spirit. Before
Dorothy Dandridge, Lonnette McKee, Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry, or
Paula Patton, there was Lena. If you are a woman of color in the
business, and you elect to pursue a living performing on stage, using a
microphone or appearing before a camera, you owe a debt of thanks to
Lena Horne.

Read more here.

Sundance fellow and author of Blood Beats, Vols 1 and 2, Ernest Hardy, wrote the following:

When I was a child her beauty grabbed me first, but there was so much
more… that extraordinarily regal bearing, which never broke; the fire
in her eyes that let you know there was a real fighter behind that
classically gorgeous face; the earthy, frank humor which dispelled the
"goddess" mystique in which her countenance and her own rich, layered
history (personal and professional) shrouded her. But it was her vast
reality and the courage and class with which she lived it that made me a
lifelong fan, and made her relevant beyond nostalgic longing. Her
struggles in Hollywood and her principled stands against racism in the
entertainment  industry, in the military (she was an early challenger to
the rules of segregation that were in effect when celebrities performed
for the military in the '40s), and in America at large made her a
heroine and cultural icon for Black folks even though her film career
was a clear example of the race-based glass ceiling at work. We had
great pride in her because she was talented and tenacious… But also
because she was loud and clear about the pride she had in us, long
before such pride was publicly fashionable. She was tough. Fearless.
Legendary. Her death hits hard.

Read more here.

And the NY Times obituary, written by Aljean Harmetz, is here.

Her classic, Stormy Weather: