Latest news with #FatherandSon
Muscat Daily
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Muscat Daily
Joint show at Stal unveils evolving face of contemporary Omani art
Muscat – A group exhibition at Stal Gallery and Studio is offering a reflective look at cultural memory, personal identity and evolving artistic expression in Oman. Titled Narratives of Colour – Contemporary Vision , the show running till August 31 brings together works of seven Omani artists. Among the participating artists is Sayyida Afra bint Talal al Said, whose series Shadows of Oman uses textiles and natural motifs to explore the emotional weight of memory and tradition. Palm frond shadows over fabric are a recurring element, bridging past and present through quiet, textured scenes. 'This exhibition marks an important milestone in my journey,' said Sayyida Afra. 'It's my first participation in Stal Gallery, and it strengthens my commitment to experimentation using fabric, texture and layered memory.' For her, the use of light and shadow creates a dialogue between reality and imagination, capturing the essence of Oman's landscapes and emotional depth. Veteran artist Anwar Sonia contributes paintings that revisit traditional customs with renewed energy. His works evoke scenes rooted in Omani rituals and daily life, reinterpreted with bold colours and emotional immediacy. 'Each artist here reflects their own vision,' Sonia noted. 'Colour, for us, becomes a personal language – sometimes introspective, sometimes deeply connected to place and memory.' Hassan Meer's series includes works such as Father and Son and Omani Women Gather , depicting intimate scenes of familial bonds and cultural continuity. 'This exhibition gathers a range of voices – established and emerging – that reflect how colour and memory shape identity,' Meer said. 'It's a conversation about who we are and how we express ourselves in a rapidly changing world.' (L-R) Anwar Sonia, Sayyida Afra bint Talal al Said and Hassan Meer Idris al Hooti focuses on the neighbourhood of Muttrah, its quiet alleys and fading buildings forming a nostalgic portrait of Muscat. His paintings capture everyday scenes slowly receding from public memory, yet vividly alive in collective experience. Hussain Obaid offers abstract interpretations of Omani symbols – desert motifs, maritime elements and social patterns – reimagined through a modern lens. 'His work creates a visual timeline linking the past and present in a subtle, layered way,' said a gallery visitor. The exhibition also honours the late Moosa Omar, whose series Departed Hearts features circular, textured canvases in dialogue with Oman's natural terrain. His inclusion serves as a tribute by fellow artists, whose works echo his contemplative spirit. Among the younger voices, Suha Salem presents Dispersion , a Cubist-inspired collection investigating the fragmentation of modern life. Her geometric compositions confront the pressures and paradoxes of daily existence, offering visual metaphors for identity in flux. 'Art is more than technique – it's a translation of inner experience,' said Sayyida Afra. 'Through these paintings, we share universal emotions rooted in Omani culture – nostalgia, wonder, reflection and resilience.' In gathering diverse artistic perspectives, Narratives of Colour not only examines tradition and memory, but also charts a path forward for contemporary Omani art. The exhibition positions itself as a space for open questions – about time, identity and the stories that shape a nation's evolving visual language.
New York Post
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Yusuf/Cat Stevens extends 2025 tour, adds NYC show. Get tickets today
Vivid Seats is the New York Post's official ticketing partner. We may receive revenue from this partnership for sharing this content and/or when you make a purchase. Featured pricing is subject to change. The cat's out of the bag. Yusuf/Cat Stevens just extended his forthcoming book tour in support of his yet to be released memoir 'Cat on the Road to Findout,' which is due out in the U.S. and Canada on Oct. 7. Originally, the North American leg of the run was only seven shows. Due to overwhelming demand, the 'Father and Son' singer added second shows in New York and Los Angeles. Advertisement He'll now perform back-to-back nights at NYC's Beacon Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 11 and Sunday, Oct. 12. These shows will be Yusuf/Stevens' first in the Big Apple since September 2016 on his last North American jaunt, which was dubbed 'A Cat's Attic: 50 Year Anniversary Acoustic Tour.' According to Set List FM, he performed a 33-song set at the Beacon Theatre on Sept. 20. Four days later, the inimitable crooner stopped in at Central Park's Global Citizen Festival and delivered just four songs: 'Wild World,' 'Father and Son,' 'People Get Ready' and 'Peace Train.' On this 2025 trek, Yusuf/Stevens won't be playing traditional concerts. Press releases report that the Rock Hall of Famer will engage in 'in-depth conversations' about the book and perform 'select unplugged performances of songs' at all concerts. He also added on Instagram, that he'll uncover 'other truths.' 'Cat on the Road to Findout' follows Yusuf/Stevens' artistic career from his humble beginnings in the '60s as a recording artist, mainstream fame in the '70s, a near-drowning incident that influenced him to convert to Islam and '90s comeback. Advertisement 'Having passed through the exhaustingly complex maze of everyday material life, ascending the dizzying heights of wealth, recognition, and artistic achievements, I think I've got a few things to share,' Stevens said. Fans can purchase tickets for all upcoming North American Yusuf/Cat Stevens shows on sites like Vivid Seats; the official on-sale for the newly-added 'Cat on the Road to Findout Tour' dates is Friday, May 30. Vivid Seats is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand. They have a 100% buyer guarantee that states your transaction will be safe and secure and will be delivered before the event. Yusuf/Cat Stevens tour schedule 2025 Advertisement A complete calendar including all North American tour dates (the new shows are in bold), venues and links to buy tickets can be found below. Yusuf/Cat Stevens set list In 2023, Yusuf/Stevens performed at the genre-bending Glastonbury Festival. Based on our findings at Set List FM, here's what he took to the stage including a pair of perfectly chosen covers. '01.) 'The Wind' 02.) 'Moonshadow' 03.) 'I Love My Dog / Here Comes My Baby' 04.) 'The First Cut Is the Deepest' 05.) 'Matthew & Son' 06.) 'Where Do the Children Play?' 07.) 'Oh Very Young' 08.) 'Hard Headed Woman' 09.) 'Sitting' 10.) 'Tea for the Tillerman' 11.) '(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard' 12.) 'If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out' 13.) 'Morning Has Broken' 14.) 'Take the World Apart' 15.) 'Here Comes the Sun' (The Beatles cover) 16.) 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' (Nina Simone cover) 17.) 'Highness' 18.) 'Peace Train' 19.) 'Pagan Run' 20.) 'Wild World' 21.) 'Father and Son' Yusuf/Cat Stevens new music Advertisement In June 2023, Yusuf/Stevens released his 17th studio album 'King of a Land.' Amazingly, more than 50 years removed from his heyday, the gifted vocalist sounds just as powerful and lilting as he did on 1970's seminal 'Tea for the Tillerman' and 1972's 'Catch Bull At Four.' The major difference is the production value; Yusuf/Stevens trades in stripped-down, sparse arrangements for fleshed-out, polished studio instrumentations. As a result, some tracks are majestic like the plaintive album opener 'Train on a Hill' and stirring title track 'King of a Land.' Goofy rockin' tunes like 'Pagan Run' and 'All Nights, All Days' seem out of character for the sensitive, serious star but are a welcome respite. All that being said, the obvious highlights here are the two ditties that sound most like something Yusuf/Stevens would have recorded in 1971. They are the modest 'Son of Mary' and singalong jingle jangle 'Take The World Apart' that sounds like a Paul Simon outtake. Both are wonderful and worth adding to your classic rock playlist. Want to listen for yourself? You can find 'King of a Land' here. '70s icons on tour in 2025 Many of the most sonically gifted singer-songwriters from way back when are miraculously still going strong. Don't believe us? Advertisement Here are just five of our favorites you won't want to miss live these next few months. • Paul Simon • Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band • Stevie Nicks Advertisement • Neil Young • Graham Nash Who else is out and about? Take a look at our list of all the biggest classic rockers on tour in 2025 to find the show for you. This article was written by Matt Levy, New York Post live events reporter. Levy stays up-to-date on all the latest tour announcements from your favorite musical artists and comedians, as well as Broadway openings, sporting events and more live shows – and finds great ticket prices online. Since he started his tenure at the Post in 2022, Levy has reviewed a Bruce Springsteen concert and interviewed Melissa Villaseñor of SNL fame, to name a few. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change
Time Magazine
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Art Is a Powerful Tool to Fight Racial Injustice
Larcenia Floyd died in 2018, two years before George. But when her son was being asphyxiated to death by Derek Chauvin, he screamed for her. It was the 'Mama!' heard around the world, an anguished incantation that called millions into the streets to protest. That wail of loss—the sound of a ripped-apart parent and child—to the cold hands of premature death has been a commonplace of Black American life throughout history. Scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore has described it this way: 'Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.' Poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks put the same thought in these terms: 'we jazz June/we die soon,' she wrote in her seminal poem 'We Real Cool.' In 2010, fine artist Titus Kaphar completed the painting Father and Son. It depicts scholar W.E.B. DuBois—arguably the greatest thinker of the 20th century—with a cutout where his son might have been, lying across his lap. Kaphar's piece is a contemporary pieta, one not based in the story of Mary cradling the body of Jesus after his descent from the cross, but instead, one from Black history. In DuBois' 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, he included the autobiographical essay 'Of the Passing of the First Born' about the death of his toddler son Burghardt, a death that might have been avoided had the diphtheria vaccine been made available to Black people in Atlanta where DuBois was working as a professor at Atlanta University. DuBois carried that grief with him as he wrote essays, fiction, and pageants, as he edited The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, as he rose and fell as a leader when the nation and many of his peers grew to consider him too strident, too far left, too unflinching. Kaphar's stirring portrait was completed 107 years after Souls and 47 years after DuBois' death. It followed, but it also foretold. Father and Son preceded what we think of as the beginning of the Black Lives Matter era by three years, which we tend to date to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, in 2013. Kaphar continued to paint portraits of parents without children in the second decade of this century as we saw the parade of sonless mothers who came to be known as 'Mothers of the Movement,' a chilling redux of images of the 1960s. These repetitions reveal a harrowing truth. Such a portrait is timeless as long as racial inequality far too frequently sinks life and chances of life in this country. And despite the shrill denials heard in anti-DEI and anti-'woke' platforms, the evidence is clear: Racial inequality is as it ever was in the United States. Art is a particularly powerful tool in this moment because it can offer more than just points for debate. Art can engage not just the intellect, but the soul, hence the aptly titled DuBois classic. It resonates with our greatest hopes and deepest frustrations. Above all, it buoys the spirit, enabling us to continue to press for a better future, but also to imagine what that future might be by refusing the idea that our bodies are fated for abuse and destruction. I have often attested to the beauty of raising Black children because I believe we deserve to feel something more than the fear of raising children in a dangerous and unequal world. I want to affirm that joy keeps us going when terror feels overwhelming using my art—writing—and my intellect as the vehicle for truth. But, having lived through the mass death of COVID-19 and now living in the age of backlash against everything that made my life possible as a Black woman professor, it is undeniable that notwithstanding the multimillion-strong season of protest in honor of George Floyd's life, we aren't on more solid ground. In fact, we have been pushed off land and find ourselves treading water. Ours is a living inside a cascade of crises that have compounded over the past 15, 10, five years, despite the moments of respite and promises of transformation. We have marched and sung. We have voted, protested, and pleaded. And yet, suffering persists, the water deepens. It makes you wanna holler a 'mama' of your own. (And perhaps you heard the echo of Marvin Gaye's 1971 track 'Inner City Blues.') It is no wonder, then, that in African American culture, art has flourished in the worst of times. In 1900, for instance, three years before DuBois published The Souls of Black Folk, civil rights leader and poet James Weldon Johnson and musician J. Rosamund Johnson composed 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'—the song we now know as the Black National Anthem. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, 500 Black schoolchildren in Florida first sang it to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The song became incredibly popular with Black Americans in the first decades of the 20th century. It resonated because it told the story of Black Americans' struggle in epic terms, detailing endurance and fostering hope and collective responsibility. In 1926, when Carter G. Woodson formally declared 'Negro History Week' in February (a ritual that would grow to become Black History Month in the 1970s), the song became an integral part of that annual ritual celebrated in school, religious, and civic life. The effect of singing that anthem together deepened the faith of students and their communities in the possibility of justice and strengthened the conviction that each one had a hand in transformation. A noble inheritance demanded as much. 1926 was also the year in which DuBois published the article 'Criteria of Negro Art' in which he famously said 'all Art is propaganda' speaking directly to Black American artists. The message was that artists had a hand in the struggle for human and civil rights, and therefore, should put their gifts in service to that duty. Though I would not be as heavy-handed as DuBois—I don't believe all art must be propaganda—it is certainly clear to me that art (visual art, music, literature, and dance) is essential for freedom dreaming. This is no less true in 2025 than it was in 2020, 1926, or 1903. Still, like many I suspect, I wonder if my words work—if my art matters in these moments of struggle. I need only look to others to be reminded. Mario Moore's painting Henry Bibb and/or Mary Ann Shadd hangs on my wall. In it, a Black woman in a purple embroidered robe faces the water. The title is powerful. Mary Ann Shadd was an abolitionist, a suffrage activist, the first Black woman publisher in North America and the second Black American woman to graduate from law school. Henry Bibb was born into slavery, escaped, and made his way to freedom through Detroit (Moore's hometown) to reach Canada. After emancipation, he would write an important abolitionist narrative. The woman in Moore's painting gazes at the Detroit River. In the antebellum era, crossing that watery border was a near-certain passage to freedom. The painting is for me, and I think for many who see it when it circulates in museums or on computer screens, a reminder of the once treacherous and even deadly pathways to freedom. Even more, it begs us to seek inspiration from those who traveled them as we face treachery today. I learned this implicitly in my own life course, too. I frequently say that as a writer I haunt the past. By that I mean I gaze into it to find the content through which we might craft our moral imaginations today. So many of the neglected and abused of generations past have a great deal to teach us. And if we can recognize the full ugliness in our past, we might be better at creating beauty in its stead for the future. It wasn't only in my studies that I learned this, but also in my encounters with art. Like so much of Generation X, I grew up on Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life double album. His song 'Love's in Need of Love Today' was a particularly potent teacher. It gave credence to the ever-present terror that existed in a world filled to the brim with disasters. And yet, it also issued a belief that a disposition toward love—a discipline of hope, to borrow words from abolitionist Mariame Kaba—makes the difference. Recently, I have spent a lot of time listening to Milton + Esperanza, an album pairing octogenarian Brazilian jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Milton Nascimiento and American bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding. Nascimiento has influenced generations of musicians across the globe. spalding is a contemporary phenom. Watching their NPR Tiny Desk Concert, I was as moved by the lush, exhilarating music as I was by their obvious deep friendship and love across generations. From Nascimiento to spalding there is inheritance, from spalding to Nascimiento there is homage. They are, like me, both descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, and generations turned from centuries of racial violence and injustice. And through the current hysteria-inducing political chaos that engulfs us, I reach for the space they create, one where love and care are apparent. It is a salve and also a reminder of who we are and what we come from. It is hard to avoid cynicism, especially now. Especially with so much behind us and possibly even more before us. To bolster ourselves, many of us who do creative and intellectual work have been holding fast to a quote from Toni Morrison. It seems to be in constant circulation on social media platforms: '…This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That's our job!' What too often is left out in the meme-ing, however, is that Morrison attributed those words to a friend of hers. This friend was responding to Morrison's depression about national politics in 2004. That friend's words reminded Morrison of the dangerous conditions in which so much great art has been made. Morrison concluded the essay she wrote for the Nation that described this interaction by saying, 'I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.' Indeed, she kept creating until her final days, like DuBois, through war and injustice and even after the passing of her second-born son, Slade. Morrison's remarkable courage is a reminder that the value of art in these times is much greater than how it might inspire people to action alone. It exists in art's power to allow us to find meaning notwithstanding mourning, to imagine our way out of the morass of our present moment or personal challenges, and to keep us living rather than frozen in fear and anguish. Take, for example, the Blues—that foundational American music born on plantations and in penitentiaries—and how it insisted upon the full humanity of Black people in the harshest of conditions. Indeed, the Blues tradition might explain why George Floyd himself turned to one of Blues' musical descendants, hip-hop, when he was trying to turn his life around, an effort that ultimately brought him to Minneapolis, where he was killed. Art does not forestall injustice. It does not shape policy or create law. It is not the same work as political organizing or protest. But it is indispensable. One need only to look at the joy of line dancing on social media and the majesty of Mardi Gras krewes in New Orleans for current examples. Each season we find new iterations of old habits, ones that refresh culture but also keep tradition alive. That combination allows us to more deeply contemplate our condition— to meditate on that which would be right and good. Most of all, it helps us find and nourish love. Love is indeed in need of love today. For our children. For all of us. Over 20 years ago, when I first embarked on parenthood, I thought of all the music, all the dancing, all the literature, all the museum exhibitions, all of the folk wisdom, the seeds of folklore, and the creative language that I had to offer my children from my tradition. My heart was full with gifts. Despite the inevitability of racism, they were born to an abundant inheritance that I insisted upon affirming at every turn. That is what I was given, that is what I gave, that is what we must continue to give, even as our hearts are broken. Again. There are and will be more empty-armed parents and children. In my own family, we've embraced the empty-armed and felt empty-armed in the past two years with the deaths of two of my cousins who are survived by parents and children. I believe that, albeit indirectly, losing them, both men under age 60, is a legacy of the persistent seeping force of racial injustice, snaking like smoke through our lives. The question is not whether we will grieve (we are, mightily) but whether we will find the means to survive the grief and live to fight the injustice. Art is a way.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Art Is a Powerful Tool to Fight Racial Injustice
Credit - FATHER AND SON, 2010, OIL ON CANVAS 59.5 × 48 IN. (152 × 122 CM) © TITUS K APHAR; PHOTO: JON LAM PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY FRIEDMAN BENDA Larcenia Floyd died in 2018, two years before George. But when her son was being asphyxiated to death by Derek Chauvin, he screamed for her. It was the 'Mama!' heard around the world, an anguished incantation that called millions into the streets to protest. That wail of loss—the sound of a ripped-apart parent and child—to the cold hands of premature death has been a commonplace of Black American life throughout history. Scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore has described it this way: 'Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.' Poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks put the same thought in these terms: 'we jazz June/we die soon,' she wrote in her seminal poem 'We Real Cool.' In 2010, fine artist Titus Kaphar completed the painting Father and Son. It depicts scholar W.E.B. DuBois—arguably the greatest thinker of the 20th century—with a cutout where his son might have been, lying across his lap. Kaphar's piece is a contemporary pieta, one not based in the story of Mary cradling the body of Jesus after his descent from the cross, but instead, one from Black history. In DuBois' 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, he included the autobiographical essay 'Of the Passing of the First Born' about the death of his toddler son Burghardt, a death that might have been avoided had the diphtheria vaccine been made available to Black people in Atlanta where DuBois was working as a professor at Atlanta University. DuBois carried that grief with him as he wrote essays, fiction, and pageants, as he edited The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, as he rose and fell as a leader when the nation and many of his peers grew to consider him too strident, too far left, too unflinching. Kaphar's stirring portrait was completed 107 years after Souls and 47 years after DuBois' death. It followed, but it also foretold. Father and Son preceded what we think of as the beginning of the Black Lives Matter era by three years, which we tend to date to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, in 2013. Kaphar continued to paint portraits of parents without children in the second decade of this century as we saw the parade of sonless mothers who came to be known as 'Mothers of the Movement,' a chilling redux of images of the 1960s. These repetitions reveal a harrowing truth. Such a portrait is timeless as long as racial inequality far too frequently sinks life and chances of life in this country. And despite the shrill denials heard in anti-DEI and anti-'woke' platforms, the evidence is clear: Racial inequality is as it ever was in the United States. Art is a particularly powerful tool in this moment because it can offer more than just points for debate. Art can engage not just the intellect, but the soul, hence the aptly titled DuBois classic. It resonates with our greatest hopes and deepest frustrations. Above all, it buoys the spirit, enabling us to continue to press for a better future, but also to imagine what that future might be by refusing the idea that our bodies are fated for abuse and destruction. I have often attested to the beauty of raising Black children because I believe we deserve to feel something more than the fear of raising children in a dangerous and unequal world. I want to affirm that joy keeps us going when terror feels overwhelming using my art—writing—and my intellect as the vehicle for truth. But, having lived through the mass death of COVID-19 and now living in the age of backlash against everything that made my life possible as a Black woman professor, it is undeniable that notwithstanding the multimillion-strong season of protest in honor of George Floyd's life, we aren't on more solid ground. In fact, we have been pushed off land and find ourselves treading water. Ours is a living inside a cascade of crises that have compounded over the past 15, 10, five years, despite the moments of respite and promises of transformation. We have marched and sung. We have voted, protested, and pleaded. And yet, suffering persists, the water deepens. It makes you wanna holler a 'mama' of your own. (And perhaps you heard the echo of Marvin Gaye's 1971 track 'Inner City Blues.') It is no wonder, then, that in African American culture, art has flourished in the worst of times. In 1900, for instance, three years before DuBois published The Souls of Black Folk, civil rights leader and poet James Weldon Johnson and musician J. Rosamund Johnson composed 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'—the song we now know as the Black National Anthem. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, 500 Black schoolchildren in Florida first sang it to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The song became incredibly popular with Black Americans in the first decades of the 20th century. It resonated because it told the story of Black Americans' struggle in epic terms, detailing endurance and fostering hope and collective responsibility. In 1926, when Carter G. Woodson formally declared 'Negro History Week' in February (a ritual that would grow to become Black History Month in the 1970s), the song became an integral part of that annual ritual celebrated in school, religious, and civic life. The effect of singing that anthem together deepened the faith of students and their communities in the possibility of justice and strengthened the conviction that each one had a hand in transformation. A noble inheritance demanded as much. 1926 was also the year in which DuBois published the article 'Criteria of Negro Art' in which he famously said 'all Art is propaganda' speaking directly to Black American artists. The message was that artists had a hand in the struggle for human and civil rights, and therefore, should put their gifts in service to that duty. Though I would not be as heavy-handed as DuBois—I don't believe all art must be propaganda—it is certainly clear to me that art (visual art, music, literature, and dance) is essential for freedom dreaming. This is no less true in 2025 than it was in 2020, 1926, or 1903. Still, like many I suspect, I wonder if my words work—if my art matters in these moments of struggle. I need only look to others to be reminded. Mario Moore's painting Henry Bibb and/or Mary Ann Shadd hangs on my wall. In it, a Black woman in a purple embroidered robe faces the water. The title is powerful. Mary Ann Shadd was an abolitionist, a suffrage activist, the first Black woman publisher in North America and the second Black American woman to graduate from law school. Henry Bibb was born into slavery, escaped, and made his way to freedom through Detroit (Moore's hometown) to reach Canada. After emancipation, he would write an important abolitionist narrative. The woman in Moore's painting gazes at the Detroit River. In the antebellum era, crossing that watery border was a near-certain passage to freedom. The painting is for me, and I think for many who see it when it circulates in museums or on computer screens, a reminder of the once treacherous and even deadly pathways to freedom. Even more, it begs us to seek inspiration from those who traveled them as we face treachery today. I learned this implicitly in my own life course, too. I frequently say that as a writer I haunt the past. By that I mean I gaze into it to find the content through which we might craft our moral imaginations today. So many of the neglected and abused of generations past have a great deal to teach us. And if we can recognize the full ugliness in our past, we might be better at creating beauty in its stead for the future. It wasn't only in my studies that I learned this, but also in my encounters with art. Like so much of Generation X, I grew up on Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life double album. His song 'Love's in Need of Love Today' was a particularly potent teacher. It gave credence to the ever-present terror that existed in a world filled to the brim with disasters. And yet, it also issued a belief that a disposition toward love—a discipline of hope, to borrow words from abolitionist Mariame Kaba—makes the difference. Recently, I have spent a lot of time listening to Milton + Esperanza, an album pairing octogenarian Brazilian jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Milton Nascimiento and American bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding. Nascimiento has influenced generations of musicians across the globe. spalding is a contemporary phenom. Watching their NPR Tiny Desk Concert, I was as moved by the lush, exhilarating music as I was by their obvious deep friendship and love across generations. From Nascimiento to spalding there is inheritance, from spalding to Nascimiento there is homage. They are, like me, both descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, and generations turned from centuries of racial violence and injustice. And through the current hysteria-inducing political chaos that engulfs us, I reach for the space they create, one where love and care are apparent. It is a salve and also a reminder of who we are and what we come from. It is hard to avoid cynicism, especially now. Especially with so much behind us and possibly even more before us. To bolster ourselves, many of us who do creative and intellectual work have been holding fast to a quote from Toni Morrison. It seems to be in constant circulation on social media platforms: '…This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That's our job!' What too often is left out in the meme-ing, however, is that Morrison attributed those words to a friend of hers. This friend was responding to Morrison's depression about national politics in 2004. That friend's words reminded Morrison of the dangerous conditions in which so much great art has been made. Morrison concluded the essay she wrote for the Nation that described this interaction by saying, 'I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.' Indeed, she kept creating until her final days, like DuBois, through war and injustice and even after the passing of her second-born son, Slade. Morrison's remarkable courage is a reminder that the value of art in these times is much greater than how it might inspire people to action alone. It exists in art's power to allow us to find meaning notwithstanding mourning, to imagine our way out of the morass of our present moment or personal challenges, and to keep us living rather than frozen in fear and anguish. Take, for example, the Blues—that foundational American music born on plantations and in penitentiaries—and how it insisted upon the full humanity of Black people in the harshest of conditions. Indeed, the Blues tradition might explain why George Floyd himself turned to one of Blues' musical descendants, hip-hop, when he was trying to turn his life around, an effort that ultimately brought him to Minneapolis, where he was killed. Art does not forestall injustice. It does not shape policy or create law. It is not the same work as political organizing or protest. But it is indispensable. One need only to look at the joy of line dancing on social media and the majesty of Mardi Gras krewes in New Orleans for current examples. Each season we find new iterations of old habits, ones that refresh culture but also keep tradition alive. That combination allows us to more deeply contemplate our condition— to meditate on that which would be right and good. Most of all, it helps us find and nourish love. Love is indeed in need of love today. For our children. For all of us. Over 20 years ago, when I first embarked on parenthood, I thought of all the music, all the dancing, all the literature, all the museum exhibitions, all of the folk wisdom, the seeds of folklore, and the creative language that I had to offer my children from my tradition. My heart was full with gifts. Despite the inevitability of racism, they were born to an abundant inheritance that I insisted upon affirming at every turn. That is what I was given, that is what I gave, that is what we must continue to give, even as our hearts are broken. Again. There are and will be more empty-armed parents and children. In my own family, we've embraced the empty-armed and felt empty-armed in the past two years with the deaths of two of my cousins who are survived by parents and children. I believe that, albeit indirectly, losing them, both men under age 60, is a legacy of the persistent seeping force of racial injustice, snaking like smoke through our lives. The question is not whether we will grieve (we are, mightily) but whether we will find the means to survive the grief and live to fight the injustice. Art is a way. Perry is the National Book Award–winning author of South to America, as well as seven other books of nonfiction. Her latest book is Black in Blues How a Color Tells the Story of My People This project was supported by funding from the Center for Policing Equity. Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Art Garfunkel of Simon & Garfunkel Reveals Longtime Health Struggle
While legendary musician of Simon & Garfunkel has stayed mostly out of the public eye recently, the 83-year-old Grammy winner is speaking out at last about something he's secretly struggled with for decades. In a new interview with People, Garfunkel revealed that he's been "quietly" fighting psoriasis for a long time — but he's finally ready to open up about the uncomfortable condition. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 "Psoriasis is something I lived with quietly for many years. It was part of my life even during my most public moments, including on tours, but I rarely, if ever, spoke about it," Garfunkel said. "I found ways to cover it on stage, in photos and in my day-to-day life. It's not something people would have known by looking at me, but it was always there, under the surface. I am just glad it never made its way into the music." Garfunkel went on to detail the various remedies he tried throughout his life, with little to no success. "My treatment journey was long, and it wasn't easy. Over the course of decades, I tried many approaches — different creams, remedies, even treatments involving UV light and tar," he said. "I remember being completely covered in tar; what a mess. Some gave me temporary relief, but nothing really lasted — it was a frustrating cycle." Finally, Garfunkel was introduced to the biologic ILUMYA by his dermatologist. "After my first few doses, my skin began to clear up, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel the need to hide. Life started to change for me," he said. The treatment was such a game changer for Garfunkel that he felt compelled to spread the word. "With a treatment that works for me, and the support from the love of my life, Kim, and the rest of my family, I am in a different place," he said. "I realized that sharing my story might help someone else who is still in the thick of it. By revealing my story, I want to reach someone who is struggling with psoriasis and let them know you are not alone and that there is hope to place psoriasis in the rearview mirror of your life." Garfunkel even put out an LP with his son, Art Garfunkel Jr., in November 2024, titled Father and Son. "I have such a wonderful family — my wife Kim and our two beautiful sons, AJ and Beau, are fantastic," he said. "We even perform together now, which is such a joy. Sharing the stage with them — and doing it while feeling fully comfortable in my skin — has brought me a whole new kind of peace. I am ready for everything good."
