Projects tagged "Music & Sound"

How Nina Simone turned the movement into music
Practitioner:
Nina Simone
Date:
Jul 4 1965
My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd.
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Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ Is Still Revolutionary
Practitioner:
Lady Gaga
Date:
Feb 11 2021
Lady Gaga said something interesting about her song “Born This Way” during a March 2011 interview at Google headquarters. “What's so funny [is] when I put that song out, everybody was like, ‘Oh, the lyrics are so literal,’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah,’” she shared, almost with a fuck-you cadence. She wasn't angry—but you could tell how important the track was to her, and how she didn't want its message muddled.
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Soviet Disco
Practitioner:
Soviet Union
Date:
Jan 1 1977
The origin of the Soviet disco tradition, one that lasts to this day in the DJ-laden nightlife of Moscow and St. Petersburg, lay in the Stalinist era. Western culture – modernism, cubism, rock and roll, all that good stuff – was “decadent,” perhaps even a plot by Trotskyists or the Western intelligentsia to dull the steely nerves of the Soviet people. But dancing – this was a-OK.
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The Crossroads Project
Practitioner:
Robert Davies, Fry St. Quartet
Date:
Apr 3 2012
This month’s blast of arctic air may have roused climate-change skeptics. But the composer Laura Kaminsky and the painter Rebecca Allan were unfazed. Holed up in their apartment in Riverdale in the Bronx on one of the coldest days in decades, these longtime artist-activists were doing what came naturally: fighting the planet’s warming.
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Training in Dance and movement Psychotherapy as a tool for reconciliation
Practitioner:
Dunna
Date:
Mar 27 2010
For over 60 years, Colombia has been facing war between guerrilla groups, the State, paramilitary groups and drug dealers. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, raped, displaced and threaten by this armed conflict. The common trait of this tragedy has been the people being in the middle, the people that still today pay the consequences.
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#DontMuteDC and Moechella Protest
Practitioner:
Don't Mute DC and Long Live Go-Go
Date:
Apr 7 2019
In response to white gentrifiers trying to silence go-go music on the corners of Florida Avenue and 7th Avenue, activists and D.C. residents poured into the streets by blasting go-go music and celebrating its rich history within the city. For those unfamiliar, go-go music is at the heart of D.C. culture and features live bands playing covers of, and sometimes original, music with all different types of drums and other percussion instruments.
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Why the Music of Protest Is Still Worth Defending
Practitioner:
Dar Williams
Date:
Mar 7 2014
It's become fashionable to say that political music is either dead or irrelevant.
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Act ii: COWBOY CARTER
Practitioner:
Beyonce
Date:
Mar 29 2024
Following her sensational first ablum dedicated to the Black queer community via house and dance music, act i: RENAISSANCE, Beyonce released act ii: COWBOY CARTER in late March . The album is speculated to have come from her 2017/2018 performance of "Daddy Issues" at the Country Music Awards with the Dixie Chicks where the artist felt "unwelcomed".
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Why Prince is a Powerful Example of Artistic Activism
Practitioner:
Prince
Date:
Apr 21 2016
From calling out poverty in his lyrics to his support of coding, the legendary artist pushed the world to care about more than music.
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Starbucks Customers Are Insisting ‘Black Lives Matter’ Is Heard
Practitioner:
Lex Cross
Date:
Jul 18 2016
In the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Black Lives Matter supporters are finding creative ways to make sure the movement is acknowledged everywhere. When ordering at Starbucks, people have changed their name to “Black Lives Matter” so that, when their order is up, the baristas have to yell out their new moniker.
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Jesus as a Working Class Hero: Resignifying religion in Spanish music (three examples)
Practitioner:
Gloria Fuertes, Extremoduro, SKA-P
Date:
May 13 2015
The story of the life and death of Jesus is arguably the most ubiquitous story ever told. Translated to every language, vastly circulated, taught in schools all around the world, conservative groups –except for some exemptions, like Liberation Theology- have held monopoly of this narrative for the longest time. However, like every other narrative, it is not totally closed to resignification and oppositional and negotiated readings.
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Same Love
Practitioner:
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Date:
Jul 1 2013
The rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has broken records with their hits “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” And now, with their pro-marriage equality hit “Same Love,” which features out lesbian Mary Lambert, they’re shattering stereotypes.
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