Happy Birthday to Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospelby Chris Heagle, technical director
Mahalia Jackson would have been 100 years old
todayon October 26th. To celebrate, here’s one of her best-loved interpretations, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”She recorded over two dozen albums in her lifetime, won five Grammy awards, and was honored from nearly every direction — from gracing a 32-cent stamp to being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She appeared in a few films, most memorably perhaps in Imitation of Life and was a smash at the Newport Jazz Festival. Hers was the chosen voice for John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral. Though she was often courted by other artists to crossover and sing jazz or blues, she never did, saying famously, “When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what’s wrong.”
Editor’s note (10.16.2011 1:53pm): Thanks to an astute reader, we made a factual error in this post. Mahalia Jackson’s birthday occurs ten days from the date of this posting, on October 26th. We apologize for the error and got a little too excited about sharing this great gospel hymn and remembering this wonderful singer.
Oct 17 2011
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“ …I want to see America in the most slow and mindful way possible. I am also craving adventure and want to test my ability to handle tough and uncertain situations. A cross-country walk has long been a dream of mine, and it’s about time I do something about it.
I also want to (hopefully) inspire people to pursue big dreams of their own. The last thing anyone wants to do is get to the end of their life and wonder, “What if?
I also want to (hopefully) inspire people to pursue big dreams of their own. The last thing anyone wants to do is get to the end of their life and wonder, “What if?
— “Twenty-Three Year-Old Nate Damm Walks Across America” via The Art of Non-Comformity
Oct 10 2011
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Community-supported agriculture has been gaining steam in recent years as the local and organic food movements gain traction. The idea is people sign up to receive vegetables and fruit from local farmers in order to support them, share in the risk of food production, and receive delicious local food. Now, two art organizations in Minnesota have taken that idea to artists and art lovers.
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“ The question for me is, how do we love wisdom — philosophia — in the face of impending catastrophe, given the kind of thinking, loving, caring, laughing, dancing animals that we are?
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—Cornel West, as excerpted from “Focus on the Funk” an interview with Eduardo Mendieta
Photo by James Stewart/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
(via beingblog)
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“ The music runs deep in us and is embedded in our culture, passed on by our ancestors,” said Kareema Ismail, a singer and dancer. “The Swahili beats in our music is a long tradition from Zanzibar. It is not something that will be replaced by contemporary music.
