blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

If you know the words to this song, have heard a family member (including Grandmother's) sing any of the lyrics to Sparrow's Jean & Dinah, then you're a Trini.: For many, the playful lyrics was more about a country feeling the relief from the yoke of a foreign presence being lifted rather than the lack of customers that fed into the Prostitution that the U.S. military presence encouraged.  It was every Trinidadian's jubilant exclaim to sing along with Sparrow when he sings, "Yankees gone and Sparrow take over now!"  I especially always enjoyed how my grandmother's eyes would light up and she would throw her arms up in the air and sing along, laughing at me, becoming for a minute a young, prepubescent girl, perhaps in the audience, gazing up adoringly at Sparrow, whom I suspect many Trini women adore.  Well the girls in town feeling bad No more Yankees in Trinidad They going to close down the base for good Them girls have to make out how they ...

I had the pleasure of meeting Brook Stephenson many moons ago at a Soho cafe with Mr. John McGregor, whom I affectionately refer to as the Don Quixote of publishing.  Brook has continued to stay in touch, honing his craft in writing, teaching and well, just being Brook!  Here's Brook's latest! I'll be reposting his writing here , and you can click here-  http://www.brookstephenson.com/   -if you want to check out just how cool this guy actually is.  Brook's Bistro: Art, Culture, + Literature Another day in the kitchen just to make sure the food comes out right and the guests are engaged. The newsletter bistro will contain a lot of fixings from art, culture and lifestyle. It will definitely have my top picks for literature and events covered or upcoming.  This week's  Ebony.com  booklist has some heat from children's picture books to poetry to popular fiction. If you have a child who's curious about hip-hop's start, a love of poetry and vis...

Check out more on Reverend Shine Snake Oil Co. here  - R.S.S.O. & Co. recently dropped their album "Anti Solpsism pt. I Creatures" which you can buy here  . If you're into blues, rock & roll, gospel, well, music in general - R.S.S.O.& Co. has a little something for everyone. I especially appreciate the poetry inherent in the lead singer's Claudius Pratt's lyrics. Having known Claudius since back in the 90s, it's inspiring to see his talent grow and how he has tended his craft with diligence and patience. Put that together with Mathias Klein on drums, Martin Ollivierre on  bass and Justin Moses Gunn on guitar and you have a pretty electrically-charged experience. If you ever have the opportunity to check these guys out live, I say do it. It truly is a multi-faceted submersion into time and space, where rhythms and cultures communicate with each other, weaving a tapestry of inclusion--thus achieving in music what so often fails in politics. From ...

Last year Britain's Chanel 4 did a series on Scandinavia entitled "Scandimania" where the region's culture was examined. This episode is all about Denmark.

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou's performance was an intellectual feast of challenging our own preconceptions of gender, nationality, sexuality.   One of the performances I was able to check out on my recent sojourn to NYC was   Preach R. Sun's Chrysalis (Cry + Solace)  , a performance I will write about in more depth later.  Through him, I met Jill McDermid Hokanson& Erik Hokanson of Grace Space and Gray Zone and given a crash-course on the world of performance art. Some of the artists I had the distinction of seeing include,  MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU [MOROCCO/BELGIUM/FRANCE]  whose performance in red pumps, running on a treadmill while singing " Run, run, baby, baby, run run ," among other ditties, and pouring a variety of seasonings on himself, well was, let's just say deliciously thought-provoking on subjects such as gender, religion, nationality.  As China conquers the world, artists challenge what they cannot in their ancestral ...

thanks puff. ..