Art Works Podcast

Folklorist Elena Martínez is a producer for the documentaries “From Mambo to Hip Hop: A Bronx Tale” and “We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo.” What makes these documentaries stand out is, of course, the fabulous music. But the perspective or point of view of both films is just as important.  The films examine the music through the lens of urban folklore—music created by and for the people in the neighborhood, a small stretch of the Bronx often known for urban blight and not much else.  Well, as the films demonstrate, there is a lot more- the sound of Mambo which adopted Cuban rhythms and Puerto Rican traditions, a Latin beat joined up with R&B and funk which gave birth to Boogaloo, the creation of the New York salsa sound, the rise of hip hop. And astoundingly, all this creative energy happening in the same small neighborhood in the Bronx. In this podcast, Elena Martínez talks about the making of “From Mambo to Hip Hop” and “We Like It Like That”  She takes us through the exuberant Latino musical traditions of the Bronx and its impact on the people who live there. Martínez is an enthusiastic guide to some fabulous urban music traditions.

“From Mambo to Hip Hop”

“We Like It Like That”

City Lore

Bronx Music Heritage Center

September 27 will be an historic night for opera lovers: the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts company in the nation, will open its season after the long pandemic shut-down with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts since its development period, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” is based on the memoir by Charles Blow. It’s composed by jazz great Terence Blanchard with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, and it is the first opera by a Black composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera.   Angel Blue will be starring along with baritone Will Liverman. It’s the second time Angel Blue has opened the season for the Metropolitan Opera: in 2019, she was Bess in the Grammy-winning production of “Porgy and Bess”—a role in which she shone. But shining on stage is what Blue does as a singer and as an actress.  For the past decade and a half, Blue has performed to great acclaim in opera houses around the world and in a variety of roles.  Now, she has emerged as one of the most vibrant sopranos performing today. Her voice has been praised for its “shimmering beauty”  that is “always perfectly controlled and consistent throughout her expansive range.”  In this podcast, Angel Blue and I talk about opera and its joys, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” her career in Europe, her first-time performing at the Met, and her thoughts about DEI and opera.

Tap Dancer and 2021 National Heritage Fellow Reginald “Reggio the Hoofer” McLaughlin has been motivated by one thing his entire life: his love of tap-dancing. He walked away from a successful R&B career as a bassist to pursue his unlikely dream of making it as a dancer. Born and bred in Chicago, he turned to mentors like Jimmy Payne to teach him the foundations of tap dance which only affirmed his passion for dance. Unable to find a job as a tap dancer, he went down to Chicago’s subways and danced there—learning along the way how to connect to an audience. He was approached by Urban Gateways—a non-profit that brings the arts to underserved children-- and began performing in classrooms. But McLaughlin wasn’t only dancing, he was also teaching the students the history of tap and its social and cultural context. Given his talent, personality, and dedication, Reggio McLaughlin was a natural performer and teacher. He teamed up with the legendry tap-dancer Ernest “Brownie” Brown and the two of them performed together for almost two decades. About 27 years ago,  McLaughlin began teaching tap at the [oldtownschool.org]Old Town School of Folk Music where he remains an in-demand teacher.  And he’s traveled around the world participating in Old Town’s International Program demonstrating tap and collaborating with dancers from many cultures.  Reggio is a great story-teller, and in this podcast we talk about Chicago, his career as an R&B bassist, his love of tap as an American art form, choreographing his Christmas classic “The Nut Tapper,” and dancing-- in the subways, in the classrooms, around the world, and with Ernest Brown. His enthusiasm and easy laughter are contagious!

In Washington, DC, the evening of September 10 promises to be momentous: at 6 pm ET, Ford’s Theatre is presenting Come From Away: In Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s hard to think of a more appropriate play than Come From Away to mark this occasion. The Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical was inspired by the aftermath of 9/11, when a small town in Canada welcomed some 7,000 people whose flights had been diverted when the U.S. airspace was closed.  Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the free non-ticketed concert is the brainchild of Sue Frost of Junkyard Dog Productions, the lead producers of Come From Away, and Paul Tetreault, director of Ford's Theatre. In this music-filled podcast, Frost and Tetreault talk about the origins of the play Come From Away, its inspiring story and glorious music, their hopes for the concert, and the power of art to give voice to tragedy and to shine light on possibility. We also discuss the significance of the return of live performance for Ford’s Theatre, for Come From Away, and for theaters across the country.

2020 NEA National Heritage Fellow, teacher, and Haudenosaunee Raised Beadworker, Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) creates contemporary art that is deeply rooted in the past. Haudenosaunee  or Iroquois raised beadwork is unique to the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which includes the Oneida. Its hallmark is beads sewn in a such a way that they arch above the fabric creating stunning dimensionality. Hoffman has taken this art to new literal and figurative heights—creating large beaded urns for example. But while her work is deeply connected to the traditions and culture of the Haudenosaunee, her interest is in taking the form and “exploring, expanding and reimagining it against contemporary life.”  A three-time master-teacher in Wisconsin’s folk arts apprenticeship program, Hoffman is committed to keeping this traditional art vibrant for the next generations through her teaching. She is not just an extraordinarily talented artist, she’s also, as you’ll hear, a passionate advocate for the art form and a fabulous storyteller.

Drummer, producer, educator and 2021 NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington is not only a virtuoso musician, she’s also a strong advocate for social justice and gender equity on the bandstand and in the classroom.  Deeply committed to empowering the next generation of musicians, Carrington is the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.  Carrington has spent her life in jazz. Coming from a musical family, she had her first professional gig at the age of ten (with Clark Terry, no less!). By the time she 11, she was a part-time student of the Berklee College of Music. And her career took off from there. In the 1980s, she worked with jazz luminaries like Pharaoh Saunders and Frank West; in the 1990s, she toured with jazz greats like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. She went on the lead her own groups, and in 2014, she became the first woman to win a Grammy Award as a leader for Best Jazz Instrumental Album with Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue. She brought together women instrumentalists and vocalists for The Mosaic Project tours and recordings. Her recent album Waiting Game with her group Social Science is the definition of artistic intersectionality in terms of race, gender, age, and style. In this podcast, we talk about her early mentors, her development as a drummer and as a bandleader, some of the great musicians she’s played with, and her advocacy for gender equity in jazz and society.

With the new school year upon us, this week we’re turning our attention to arts education. First, Ayanna Hudson, director of Arts Education at the National Endowment for the Arts (and currently acting deputy chairman of Programs and Partnerships), reminds us of the singular role the arts and arts education can play as students return to the classroom. Hudson emphasizes that involvement in the arts not only engages and empowers students, it can also support the social and emotional needs of students during this critical transition and provide a much-needed vehicle for self-expression. Then we explore an example of arts education and its ability to transform students with new media artist and educator Agnes Chavez. Chavez is the founder of STEMarts Lab, which uses the arts to develop science and math skills.  Based in Taos, New Mexico, the artists at STEMarts Lab design and create light and sound installations and then build curriculum tools around the art. STEMarts Lab also bring artists into the classroom to work with teachers and provide hands-on workshops both in person or virtually.  During the pandemic and virtual classrooms, Chavez responded “to the problem that I was hearing from teachers that the kids were not engaged, that shifting to this online format was just not working. And my question to myself and to my team was, 'How can we use our creativity, our digital tools to come up a more engaging way to reach them?'"  In answer, Chavez created a virtual international exchange program that connected a classroom in Taos, New Mexico, with a classroom in Portugal in which the students collaborated on an art installation that had real world and virtual applications. Space Messengers turned out to be a winning formula, engaging students and exciting teachers. As one teacher wrote, “The temptation of creating art and learning some fascinating science from experts around the world, while working with kids from another country, has proven magical for the COVID-battered students…” In this podcast, Chavez tells us about the program, how learning science through art impacts students’ ways of thinking, and the program’s continuing evolution.

Additional Information

National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Education

Arts Education Partnership

“Supporting Student Wellness Through the Arts”

“How Artists Can Bridge the Digital Divide and Reimagine Humanity” by Agnes Chavez

https://www.arts.gov/back-school-arts-education

This week, we’re talking about investing in the creative economy from two perspectives. First, we get an overview of the issues from Laura Callanan. She’s the founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab,  an organization which works to connect impact investing to the creative economy.  With global partners from the UK and Argentina, Upstart Co-Lab co-published a report about this--Creativity, Culture & Capital: Impact investing in the global creative economy brings together some 40 essays from organizations from around the world that support impact investing in creative industries. In the podcast, Callanan explains what’s meant by the creative economy and impact investing, and how they contribute to a thriving culture and economy. She always shares what the United States might learn from the work done in this area by other countries.

Then, we burrow down and look at investing in the creative economy from a local perspective by looking at the work done in Atlanta, Georgia, with Sheoyki Jones. Sheoyki Jones is the founding program manager of Creative Industries, an initiative of Invest Atlanta.  (She also contributed an essay to the Creativity Culture & Capital report called “The Creative Industries: Driving Economic Opportunity in Atlanta.”) Jones talks with me about the programs that Creative Industries began that support Atlanta’s creative workers. She discusses the importance of genuine outreach to creative workers and also shares some of the challenges and best practices in designing programs that invest in and support local creative communities.

In his documentary The Story Won’t Die--an official selection of the AFI DOCS Film Festival-- director David Henry Gerson looks at the lives and work of eight Syrian artists in exile. Since the civil war in Syria began ten years ago, more than half of the country’s population has been forcibly displaced. Of these, 6.8 million are refugees and asylum-seekers who have fled the country. The life of an artist is never easy—but to create art, first, under a violent and oppressive dictatorship, and then, as a refugee struggling to survive in a strange land, is something else again. What meaning does free expression have for someone in exile? Who is there to see or hear? Where can words and images resonate? How do you make a community in exile? These are some of the questions that the artists ask themselves and that The Story Won’t Die explores. These artists do continue to create in spite of displacement, As Gerson says, they “find ways to turn very dark, awful circumstances into creativity.” The Story Won’t Die interweaves the stories of these eight artists, with their art—music, dance and visual arts—taking pride of place in the film and becoming a central part of the narrative. In this podcast, David Henry Gerson talks about his decision to make a film that focuses on Syrian artists in exile, the relationship that developed with the artists, interweaving the art with their stories, the burden of exile, and the extraordinary resilience shown by these artists under dire circumstances.

Featured Artists: Abu Hajar, Bboy Shadow (Mohammad Sabboura), Diala Brisly, Tammam Azzam, Anas Maghrebi, Medhat Aldaabal, Omar Imam, Bahila Hijazi

Anita Fields, a citizen of Osage Nation, is a renowned textile and clay artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her art reflects Osage philosophy with its connection to nature and emphasis on duality. Her work also gives a new visual language to the complexities of Native history and culture. While immensely talented in other media, Fields has been named a National Heritage Fellow for her outstanding ribbon work. Native American ribbon work is colorful, precise, and complex. The style of Osage ribbon work is unique and Fields is an exemplar of the art form. An innovative artist, she honors the tradition while taking it to new places--for example, taking the designs of ribbon work and impressing it on her ceramic and clay pieces.  In this podcast, Fields talks about the centrality of Osage culture and philosophy in her art, her work in different media, her respect for and innovations of traditional textile and clay work, and her long and continuing artistic journey.