back to church
Mt. Do-Well Baptist Church Hymn Choir, “You’re Gonna Need a Friend,” live, McConnells, S.C., 1991
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Monday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Josef Koudelka (1938-), Slovakia, 1963 (from Gypsies)
Nationality Doubtful, closes today
His music, which I’ve been listening to for over forty years, never grows old. If anything, the opposite is true. Year after year, it gets stronger, deeper, fresher.
Blind Willie Johnson, “Trouble Will Soon Be Over” (with Willie B. Harris), 1929
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lagniappe
reading table
I love the past tense, but you can’t live there.
—John Koethe, “Stele” (fragment; ROTC Kills, 2012)
back to church
Nazareth Missionary Baptist Church Hymn Choir (Rock Hill, S.C.),”I Got Shoes,” live, McConnells, S.C. (Mt. Do-Well Missionary Baptist Church), 2001
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Mission: To transmit the tenderness of the human spirit through the disciplined action of a human body.
—pianist Marilyn Nonken (featured yesterday, heard last night in Chicago)
sounds of Chicago
Victory Travelers, live, Chicago, 2013
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lagniappe
art beat
Lee Friedlander (1934-), Chicago, 1968
four takes
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
Isaiah, live, Chicago, 2014
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Albert Ayler, recording, 1964
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Parliament Funkadelic (“Swing Down, Sweet Chariot”), live Houston, 1976
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Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, recording, 1909
testify!
Sonz of God, “Show Me the Way,” live, Memphis, 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.
—Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
back to church
“Wade in the Water,” St. James Missionary Baptist Church, Canton, Miss., 1978
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lagniappe
reading table
Serenity
by Nina Cassian (1924-2014)There’ll be a time, serene, a time for hymns.
I’ll underline the air with just one gesture,
and I will utter stainless words.I will say “sky” and “brook” and I’ll say “sun”
and “tear” and “music” and “immunity.”
There’ll be a time, a time when memory
of massacres won’t reach me anymore,
turning instead into a distant breeze of poetry
as sometimes blood itself exhales.From all that once had been promiscuous,
only the sacred will remain, and I will praise
the contrasts, reconciled, forgiven and forgiving.
So I’ll say “sky” and “sun” and “music”
and sky will be, and sun will be, and music
will be around me and around the world.
I’ll let the vowels all regain their halo.And it will come, that bright, sonorous time,
a time solemn and pure, a time for hymns,
and it will come, that time. Indeed, it will!
sounds of Chicago
Jessy Dixon (1938-2011), “I Am Redeemed” (J. Dixon), live, Chicago, 1999
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York (subway), 1980
testify
Neal Roberson, “Don’t Let the Devil Ride,” live
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lagniappe
reading table
I am running out of life, Olga thinks. What am I going to do? What is there without life?
—Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
music clip of the day 