Anderson@Large

Black Music Month: Disco Inferno

The three-part series, Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, debuts on PBS this week.

The first episode focuses on the roots of disco. Philadelphia native, drummer Earl Young, is the architect of disco.

Young is the founder and leader of The Trammps which had a No. 1 hit with “Disco Inferno.”

The Trammps used to perform at North Philly’s Impulse Discotheque (the building still stands).

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution will premiere Tuesday, June 18 at 9pm ET on PBS (check local listings), PBS.org and the PBS App.

Black Culture is Root of Popular Music

Countless books, dissertations, studies, news articles and social media posts have been written about Black culture and Black music. It is said a picture is worth 1000 words. In an era when 1000 words are TL;DR, this image says it all: Black culture is the root; every popular music genre is the fruit.

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

February is the shortest month but it packs a cultural wallop. I cannot think of a better way to kick off Black History Month than with “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” Composed by Anthony Davis (music), Thulani Davis (libretto) and Christopher Davis (story), the groundbreaking opera was workshopped at Philadelphia's Trocadero Theater in 1984 and premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in 1985 (the official premiere was at the New York City Opera in 1986).

The Metropolitan Opera’s staging reimagines Malcolm “as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space.” From the New York Times’ review:

The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”

That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.

Presented by Great Performances at the Met, “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” premieres beginning February 4, 2024 (check local listings) on PBS and PBS App.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Father's Day

Merry Christmas

Christmas is my least favorite time of the year. The coronavirus pandemic has eliminated a lot of the fake cheerfulness.

While I don’t like the commercialism, I love the reason for the season – and Christmas blues.

Must–See TV: Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

Toni Morrison was a writer, book editor, college professor, activist and visionary. Morrison’s much-loved novel, Beloved, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1993, she became the first black woman of any nationality to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Morrison received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor, from President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony in 2012. President Obama said:

Toni Morrison's prose brings us that kind of moral and emotional intensity that few writers ever attempt. From Song of Solomon to Beloved, Toni reaches us deeply, using a tone that is lyrical, precise, distinct, and inclusive. She believes that language “arcs toward the place where meaning might lie.” The rest of us are lucky to be following along for the ride.

American Masters presents the U.S. broadcast premiere of the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am on Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 8:00pm ET on PBS.