Maddening Masculine Mystery by Randall E. Auxier Here we have an image from the height of the Harlem Renaissance. The painter is one Aaron Douglas. His images are iconic, defining the era, the atmosphere, the edges and the center of black self-consciousness in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This is one of the most famous. It…
“The Emancipation Blues” by Randall Auxier This kid is stealing licks. Or if not, there were a few hundred others just like him filching and pilfering until they could lay down a respectable imitation. Something just happened to the right of the camera, but this kid is ignoring it. He is studying those licks. We…
Simple Songs of Freedom by Randall E. Auxier This is an illustration from the “slave narrative” (some people don’t like that label) of Solomon Northup. He was a free black from Saratoga Springs, NY, kidnapped in Washington D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He barely avoided becoming strange fruit, when he refused…
Silent as the Grave by Randall E. Auxier The first information I read said this was the Antietam battlefield, in a slave state after all, but not one in rebellion, so not subject to the Emancipation Proclamation, and hiring the freedmen to do this work. Maryland self-emancipated before the war ended. The workers were (it…
From a Metaphysical, Supernatural, Universal Point of View by Randall E. Auxier I want to believe. Yeah, right, me, Mulder, and Pollyanna. But if you look closely at this piece of sheet music, you’ll see the scruples. “The First Successful Blues Published” and “The Most Widely Known Ragtime Composition.” The first claim is surely true,…
A Left Hand Warmed Up in Hell by Randall E. Auxier Mark Twain complained to a friend that to write what he was really thinking would fill a library and he’d need a “pen warmed up in hell.” But compared to the mischief made by Scott Joplin‘s left hand, well, there’s no comparison. Here we…
Liverpool Cool and the Ivi League by Randall Auxier Picking up from Troubadours 1, a great part of what makes a song communicate to one’s ass happens below the level of lyrics and melody. Sometimes a troubadour can sacrifice lyrics and/or melody to this sort of below-the-waist movement of musical truth. (Chords and melody are,…
A Ticket to Stop Believin’ that You Can Go Your Own Way by Randall Auxier You need to admit that you like the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin’.” (Gotta love the apostrophe, too. God I do.) You know every word to this song (not that they’re hard to learn). You sing it loud when people…
Picktures and Pieces 11: “What Is and What Seems to Be” by Randall Auxier Here is an interesting image. I think you’ll agree. I’m glad that it exists. It made me laugh and laugh when I first saw it, several years ago. It was in a collection of funny photographs on one of those…
Art at the Event Horizon by Randall Auxier I hear a new world is coming. I guess that’s always true, depending on the meaning of “new.” But this one is supposed to be, like, really really new –so different we can’t imagine it now. According to Ray Kurzweil, it’s about 29 years away, give…