Sound Check's Blog Posts Tagged 'Black' (12)

Ignited at the intersection of social commentary and imagination, the cultural undercurrent of Afrofuturism critiques and examines Black subjectivity through the lens of science-fiction. Popularized by such musicians as Sun Ra, George Clinton and, most recently, Janelle Monáe, the Afrofuturist aesthetic has come into conversation amongst a new generation of youth and young adults that literally experience the world as cyborgs, both existing in person and as their online avatars…

Now that the full track has been revealed by Mark Ronson on East Village Radio (stream below), what's your verdict on Andre 3000 & Beyonce's Cover Of Amy Winhouse's 'Back To Black'? Did they murder the song in a good way or a bad way? The track is from The Great Gatsby soundtrack.…

We've recently been a little obsessed musician/producer/madman Adrian Younge and his project "Adrian Young Presents Venice Dawn". However, Younge may best be known for editing and scoring the 2009 cult classic film Black Dynamite, as well as proving music for the Black Dynamite…

50 years since the Beatles' famous performance on the Ed Sullivan show and their legacy is more complicated than ever. Were they the greatest song writers of all time, or massively overrated? Were they the band responsible for watering down rock and roll and making it safe for white suburban audiences or were they band responsible for pushing it radical new directions? Can they be all those things? (yes.) Every punk goes through a phase of rejecting the Beatles followed by a…

AFROPUNK FEST 2013 is right around the corner! We're bringing you another weekend of food, fun, sun and beautiful people August 24th and August 25th 2013 at Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, NY. Mark your calendars and join us in…

Singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone would have been 80 this week. The rightly titled High-Priestess of Soul cut an unimpeachable string of 40 records in her career. While musically, her songs fall pretty squarely in line with the vocal jazz sounds of the late 50's, her songs have not aged into elegance and irrelevance the way many of her contemporaries have. Listening to the landmark 1964 live album Nina Simone in Concert, her performance isn't merely electric.…

Though orthodoxy holds that skatepunk originated on the West Coast, pro skater and multi-instrumentalist Chuck Treece was making the world safe for melodic hardcore in Philly during the mid-80's. As the leader of the band McRad, Treece was a part of the movement to inject punk rock with reggae, funk, and metal influences. McRad's 1987 full length Absence of Sanity is these days best remembered for the tracks it contributed to the legendary skate video “Public Domain.” But the…

Digging the new Talib Kweli/Black Thought/Rah Digga collab 'Art Imitates Life'? Look out for Kweli's upcoming LP 'Prisoner Of Conscious'.…

The story of Romona Moore should have been a rallying cry. A devastating example of the inequality of justice in poor and predominantly black neighborhoods in Bloomberg's Brooklyn. Kidnapped, tortured, raped, and brutally murdered over 4 days just blocks from Romona's home, the NYPD ignored her mother's pleas for an investigation. Telling her mother she was probably just out with a boyfriend, the NYPD did nothing until after her body was discovered. For full details, the…

We talk a lot about the artists behind the microphone. But for every word written about the artists working on one side of the recording studio, tragically few words are written about the artists on the other side of the sound-proof glass. In his 40 year career, Nile Rodgers has worked with everyone from Bowie to Madonna, from Sister Sledge to Master Chief. His music unwittingly formed the backbone of hip-hop with the Sugar Hill Gang basing their breakthrough Rapper's…

Nearly 40 years before George Clinton claimed his cosmic heritage and before Crass declared that if no-one else would release their anarchic noise then they'd just do it themselves, a pianist from Birmingham (or Saturn, depending on who you ask) named Herman Poole Blount (again, depending on who you ask) set out to redefine the possibilities of music on his own terms. Although there are many many origin stories out there for the great Sun Ra, here's the version of the story that…