Sound Taste

Friday Arlenis

My interest in high fashion tends to begin and end with ANTM. Not a snob thing, just not my bag.

But the Fashionista pix and post of Arlenis Sosa (h/t to Giselle Rodríguez Cid) caught my eye. #1, she's got the mancha de plátano smack in the middle of that beautiful forehead (esp. when you see her more "natural" shots). #2, according to this NY Mag bio-chronology, her big assignments seem to be ones where she's figured as Black "African." (which, really, is just about the only way high fashion tends to see Black women anyway. Always back to Saartjie Baartman, in't?).

I am digging how African fashion (of Africa, by Africans, for Africans) has been getting more play on its own terms. Not that it means non-whites have any significant space on the catwalk, no matter what Vicki Woods says.

In the Models.com video here, Arlenis (her name alone is like a Quisqueya gang signal) represents Monte Cristi, far removed from the capital, bordering Haiti, as unlikely a place to grow supermodels as Siberia. I <3 the comments, where her cousins and assorted Dominicans pop up in all their untranslated beauty.

[Arlenis time via fashionista from Time Magazine]

17 Reasons Why: Gentrification isn't just a Black thing

I'm a little late on my review of Medicine for Melancholy, which I saw a few weeks ago at the Waverly IFC Center. I had some strong reactions, some of which were totally opposite to most of the reviews I've seen, even those by trusted astute writer friends like Ernest Hardy and Elisha Miranda.

I was excited to see the movie, a 24-hour romance between two Afro-bohos in my former home of San Francisco. There were superficial elements that reminded me of She's Gotta Have It (more on that movie, which I caught again recently after many many years, in a future post) -- the monochromatic palette, the quirky romance, the space for artsy Blackness to just breathe. But like most shorthand, the comparison doesn't hold too far.

First, the good: the sense of place, and the romance of place, comes through clearly. San Francisco is easy to fall for, the pretty girl at the party to whom everyone gravitates. But the beauty in the movie isn't just the usual postcard vistas, it's more the sweet alchemy of low-rise housing + hills that makes you feel apart and in nature in Potrero Hill, Dolores Park, the Palace of Fine Arts.

The movie pays careful attention to where people live, what they're likely to cross rolling from the Marina to the Tenderloin, the intimate little corners of the not-so-new-anymore Yerba Buena Arts Center, the industria-era nostalgia of the Britex Fabrics sign. I have a personal map of my own favorite Mission District signs: El Capitan (torn down), 500 Club (my beacon home biking down from the Haight), Thrift Town (17 Reasons Why).

Place is nostalgia, for a San Francisco that was less white, less uniformly rich. The figure we get from Micah (Wyatt Cenac, who turns in a great performance, tensed up in his laid-back-ness, always on the verge of breaking his Buster Keaton demeanor to laugh or rage) is 7% African-American population, with the stronghold being Bayview-Hunter Point -- the "redevelopment" of the Fillmore as the city's Black displacement original sin. All true, all a tragedy -- one that fits in nicely as evidence of The Plan (go 31:45 in for the relevant segment) -- but not the whole story.

As Micah and his paramour Jo wander the city and talktalktalk about race, romance and redevelopment, they pass by an open storefront where a group of people is discussing gentrification. I think these are played by real-life housing activists. What I noticed is that everyone talking about displacement from San Francisco to the East Bay and further inland was white. Huh?

The most intense displacement of the past decade has been in my former neighborhood of the Mission and like neighborhoods, traditionally Latino nabes. The Latino population of SF has remained more or less steady since 1990 (14% of the city even as total population has gone up and down). But those who remain are poorer and more marginalized. How do you talk about gentrification in San Francisco and have it be strictly a Black-white conversation?

And for that matter, how do you talk about "alternative culture" -- one of the other subjects of contention for our blipster protagonists -- and yet again frame it strictly in terms of Black-white? At one point, the couple hits a "Soul Night" in a club I could not place (Elbo Room?) where, retro-Daptones style, most of the revelers are figured as white.

But I spotted a few Chicano-Filipino-looking people in there. The notion that "alternative" only means "white" is a false one, at least to my memory of 1990s SF. Or maybe the polyracial omnisexual bohemia of my memories only exists in LA now.

And I haven't even talked about the straw-woman that is Jo, with her opaque life, contrarian non-politics and fuzzy personality. All we can gather about her is that she is the kept woman of a globe-trotting art dealer/curator. Her "creative side" and politics is restricted to making t-shirts sporting the names of female filmmakers. Um, yeah.

Micah's race warrior position can be compelling even against a tougher interlocutor than the one he gets. I couldn't figure out what Micah saw in Jo aside from cuteness and checkered Vans. It's almost like Micah is having an affair with the ideal of a Black alternative woman rather than a flesh-and-blood person.

I really wanted to like this movie. But as lovely as so much of it is, it left a sour taste in my mouth.

["Medicine for Melancholy" still via allmoviephoto.com; "17 Reasons Why" pix via thelab.org]

RIP Joe Cuba

Juan Flores, still one of the few people to write about the ecstatic utopian music form called bugalú/Latin boogaloo, reconstructs a conversation between Jimmy Sabater and Joe Cuba before the first time the band played "Bang Bang" at a "Black" dance at the club that would become the Cheetah:

"It was a black dance, the morenos, morenos americanos de Harlem and stuff, you know, they had black dances one night a week there and at some of the other spots. So that night we were playing selections from our new album We Must Be Doing Something Right that had just come out, the one with 'El Pito' on it, you know, 'I'll Never Go Back to Georgia, I'll Never Go Back...' The place was packed, but when we were playing all those mambos and cha chas, nobody was dancing. So at the end of the first set, I went over to Joe Cuba and said, look, Sonny (that's his nickname), I have an idea for a tune that I think might get them up. And Joe says, no, no, no, we got to keep on playing the charts from the new album. Then toward the end of the second set, I went on begging him, and said, look, if I'm wrong, we'll stop and I'll buy you a double. so finally he said o.k., and I went over to the piano, and told Nick Jimenez, play this... Before I even got back to the timbal, the people were out on the floor, going, 'bi-bi hah! bi-bi hah!' I mean mobbed."

I have a special love for bugalú, born the same year I was, 1966. The songs are not as melodically or rhythmically sophisticated as salsa or soul, but they cook! They always sound like you've walked into the middle of a party -- a really great party. As much a dance as a song, it's infectious; passive listening is near impossible.

Joe's band, the Joe Cuba Sextet, was radical, stripping down the lush mambo orchestra to conga, timbal, piano, vibraphone and bass, where even the melodic instruments have a share in carrying the beat, the beat, the beat. And the vocals, erupting from every corner, "corn bread, hog maw and chitlins" "cuchifritos, lechón, lechón, lechón." Cheo Feliciano soneando. Heaven.

I bet the tickets for Joe's first afterlife gig are already sold out.

UPDATE: Joe Cuba will be viewed at the R&G Ortiz Funeral Home located at 204 E. 116th Street, NYC 10029 between 3rd & 2nd Avenues. 212.722.3512 on Wednesday & Thursday, February 18th & 19th from 2 to 10 p.m.

A funeral mass service will be held Friday morning at 11 a.m. at St. Paul's Church located @ 213 E. 117th Street, between Park & Lexington.

(h/t to Clemson and David G. for the info)

Holy pochos, Batman!

I'm a sucker for pastiche. The piece below by Río Yañez (who I remember as a little kid running around Mission District artists' parties) unites two icons, Batman & el Aztec Hi-Tech Border Brujo hisself, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who as he gets older is starting to remind me more and more of a Mission street character of the 90s known as The Red Man.

And speaking of pochos, there is a bit of a kerfuffle about whether Drew Friedman ripped off Lalo Alcaraz for his recent New Yorker cover. Several folks on the West Coast are convinced he did. I'm not so sure.

Obama's image has been endlessly remixed with several obvious icons: MLK, Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln. George Washington I don't think is such a stretch. But the publication of Lalo's image predates Friedman's, and personally, I like it better -- it evokes the unfinished Gilbert Stuart painting as opposed to what most closely resembles a dollar bill. What do you think?

Visual postscripts to the Inauguration

Can't say I have much to add to the avalanche of commentary on #44's inauguration yesterday (though I may have something to say later this week on the poem), but here are a few random images that amused me to no end:

A shot I snapped on the run of the wares of a perfume salesman on 34th St. and 7th Ave. (didn't have time to purchase a sample -- I wonder what hope smells like?).

There was a gigantic re-creation of the inauguration over at Legoland. Check the slideshow over at the Guardian UK. My favorite tableaus are the line of people waiting for the portapotties and 'Retha and her bosoms. (Photograph: Graham Whitby Boot/Allstar/Allstar)

Also check this and this awesome satellite photo of ants -- er, people -- at the National Mall either at 11 am yesterday or at 9 am (there's a lot of debate on using the Washington Monument as a sundial in the comments; h/t to io9).

And I was totally tickled by the clip below, posted yesterday by Afronerd on the WNYC news blog. God, how I miss Richard Pryor.

It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day, It's a New Life for Me...

Sound Taste is still in hibernation mode, but if all goes as planned, will be emerging later this week, with a brand new bag to accessorize what, just about now, should be the new world we're living in. (Yes, in some ways the same ol' world, yet not.)

Playing in my head: Nina Simone, "Feeling Good"

[t-shirt graphic via Boing Boing]

P'al Año Nuevo

Sorry for the absence, oh readers. 2009 is already coming strong, I feel it.

To clear the paths for good things to come, check this dance for Obatalá (h/t to Rita Indiana).

Another Negro milestone?

Never mind the Black President, Dominicans are all into a Black Santa Claus this year.

According to a press release I received, the Dominican-made movie "Santi Cló: la Vaina de la Navidad" outsold "Quantum of Solace" for the week after its release Nov. 13.

Santa Claus body-slammed the Three Wise Men out of the Christmas gift-giving business a long time ago. But a Black Santa? That is progress.

Several Dominican pop movies that have come out in the past few years have had the potential to  use comedy to look at interesting issues. Sanky Panky, the previous outing by this production team, was about young men who pimp themselves out to lonely tourist women (in other words, this was the funny take on the same themes in the great Heading South).

Alas, movies like Nueba Yol, Perico Ripiao and Sanky Panky always overwhelm interesting issues with overacting, overwrought conflicts and sappy resolutions. Nonetheless, I'll probably go see this when it's released in Washington Heights (or maybe I'll just take a trip uptown to see if the bootlegs are out yet, ho ho ho).

Meantime, here's the (too-long) trailer.

[Santi Cló & Bond face off image by Santiclodominicano via Flckr]

Who's That Knocking at My Door?

Saw an astonishing tidbit in a "Talk of the Town" piece in this week's New Yorker. Prince (yes, the Purple One) on occasion goes door-knocking in the vicinity of his Los Angeles home to proselytize with fellow Jehovah's Witnesses.

“Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he said.

Makes me (almost) reconsider ignoring the buzzing on weekends. Who knows? I might run into Venus & Serena Williams, Jill Scott or Ja Rule.

[image of Prince via The New Yorker]

Ya Yo Me Curé

Amid lots of deadlines, taking a second to breathe.

Yesterday, I couldn't get Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" out of my head. Today, it's the Jerry González invocation of the spirits, a thanks for a cleansing, an invitation. "Vamos pá la rumba, vamos pá la rumba, ya yo me curé, y me despojé."

Trying to hold the cynic back, just for a minute.

In the morning light, you exchange knowing smiles, small comments. "It's a good day." "Yes. It is."

Not like last night, walking with a contingent of black and brown people from East Harlem to 125th St. Fireworks. Taxis beeping. People poking heads out of public housing windows to wave. Random hugs. Lots and lots of screaming. Witnessing. Communing.

Nagging thoughts pipe up in small voices as I hear the victory speech: yes, he is echoing MLK's speech, but that means we're still in the same Civil Rights Era narrative. This morning: the media talk about "breaking racial barriers" as if now we're done with racism and the fight for social justice; it took so much energy to make a Black, biracial, child of immigrant, majority-minority-state raised, African-connected, Asian-connected, organizing-connected, education-connected man Mr. President, I am afraid the momentum will dissipate.

Do we know what to do next? The work is just starting.

[h/t to wayne&wax for the grafik]