Soul Rebels Brass Band featuring Roy Hargrove at Brooklyn Boowl, presented by FANS
FANS’ streaming arrangement with Brooklyn Bowl and jamband outlet Relix has given many of us the opportunity to see killing archival sets and throw some money at hurting bands and venues right now.
This 2015 end of a three-night run that paired New Orleans funk titans the Soul Rebels with trumpet master Hargrove was sticky, sweaty rapture. Nothing’s ever as good as being in a room with those slurred, fiery notes washing over a crowd that feels like one undulating body but the sound and videography here gave a hell of a taste.
Watching this, I flashed back to a visceral, burning memory of seeing Soul Rebels Brass band take the Newport to church opening for Trombone Shorty, on a December night, as they raged through tunes like Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You,” D’Angelo’s “Spanish Joint” and originals like “Turn It Up.”
Wonderball at the Columbus Museum of Art
For the last few years, Wonderball has been one of the best parties in town. The CMA is setting the standard for museum fundraisers with integration of the work in the galleries, multidisciplinary performances, and outreach to the various corners of the vibrant Columbus scene.
Their digital pivot this year, born of sad necessity, had the same homespun charm and brilliant execution of past years and I was overjoyed to watch it in the backyard of a couple good friends. Fantastic co-hosts Hakim Callwood and Nina West (in a jaw-dropping Felix The Cat Clock dress) kept the show running live with Lance Johnson doing a live painting and Moxy Martinez providing beats.
Mixing live and pre-recorded pieces, they treated us to a gorgeous poem by Cynthia Amoah. They filmed myriad genres of dance throughout the galleries including Amelia Gondara & Micaela Gonzalez, Griset Damas-Roche, and my favorite, Shades of Color with Donald Isom and Brianna Rhodes dancing a duet to Jason Moncrief’s flute playing in dialogue with one of my favorite Kehinde Wiley pieces.
As one of the friends we were in person with said, “An advantage of doing it this way is you can really watch a full performance. There’s no pressure to get out of people’s way to let them see or feeling like you have move on quickly so you don’t miss something else.” And it really was a great side effect of this change.
Many of the DJs who make Wonderball such a terrific party brought their A game. Trueskillz and Aloha spun a vibrant worldbeat set. Heatwave’s DJ Adam Scoppa and DJ Lady Sandoval tore through some classic soul 45s. Ty “Nordiq” Williams laid blissful, throbbing electronica on us.
Nothing is the same as when we can all be together but anything that lets us mark these important events while staying safe is to be applauded. Anything that does it with this kind of aplomb, grace, and sense of fun is a damn miracle.
The World Around Design Summit presented by the Guggenheim
One of my favorite things is hearing smart people take on the world, especially in a field I know very little about. The Guggenheim put together an international virtual festival of architecture and design and it made my heart soar to watch people actively engaged with where we are and where we’re going.
Lines from this sent me to my notebook and kept nagging at me throughout the weekend.
Alice Rawsthorn said, “By sharing constructive design issues on Design Emergency, we can persuade more people, decision-makers especially, to see design as we do: as a powerful tool to address social, political, economic, ecological challenges and to place it at the forefront of the post-pandemic reconstruction. Design isn’t a panacea for any of [our] challenges but it is one of our most powerful tools with which to tackle them if – and it’s a big if – it’s deployed intelligently, sensitively, and responsibly.”
That attitude that everything can be a tool to address the world and make things better for people with creative thought is something I try to carry with me and I’d never had it crystallized like so clearly.
I’ve thought about the Anthropocene a lot lately, it showed up in the Under The Radar pieces I wrote about a while ago, and Feral Atlas added fuel to the fire with “The great programs for the conquest of the Earth promised modern ease and happiness but in their inattention gave us a heap of terrifying, if unevenly spread disasters.”
How do we see things at the level of impact they are without crumbling into despair? I don’t know an answer but I know we have to. I’m still unpacking these three sessions and luckily they’re on Youtube indefinitely, another side benefit of all of us being stuck in our homes:
Screen of Distance 