The Many Battles of Nina Simone

The final period of his short life finds Coltrane pushing against both of these prior periods while drawing deeply on both. The period from 1965 to 1967 finds Coltrane in search of a new language, a new vocabulary of rhythmic and sonic possibilities. He draws these increasingly from world cultures and his own southern background. This, of course, i

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But like Bernstein, Viardot — born exactly 200 years ago, on July 18, 1821 — was far more than a Zelig. One of the supreme singers of her time, she was also a prolific composer, whose music is slowly being salvaged from obscurity; a savvy entrepreneur; a gifted visual artist; and a highly respected voice teacher.

“My book Raving is anchored by a quote from Brown. I’m a white woman dancing to techno – I’m the uninvited guest in somebody else’s culture, which must be acknowledged. In Brown’s version, Black music got stolen by a global party culture. What are we doing when we’re dancing to a music that we didn’t make? In my book, I tried to centre the experien... See more

As its title suggests, Unnamed Figures not only illuminates Black appearances in the visual culture of this period but also asks how our encounters with them are shaped by the erasure of Blackness from art and archives.