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Published in drDOCTOR

·Mar 12, 2020

Compass Points

Ashawnta Jackson on the sounds of the South, traveling through the stories we tell, and the mixtapes and music made in America. — We used to make mixtapes. We used to tell our stories to one another song by song. Each one saying something we couldn’t. It’s something I miss sometimes. I miss the way that I didn’t have to find the words, just the song, and I could tell you how much…

Music

15 min read

Compass Points
Compass Points

Published in Human Parts

·Aug 13, 2019

The Art of Listening to 45s

Inheriting my mom’s childhood record collection has given me a whole new way to appreciate sound — When I was a kid, my parents had a huge record collection. Some of them, they bought together as adults, but most were from my mother’s childhood collection. She had drawn hearts around Jackie Wilson’s picture on the cover of his LP, kept her James Brown records in perfect condition…

Music

6 min read

The Art of Listening to 45s
The Art of Listening to 45s

Published in Timeline

·Jun 19, 2018

She was one of the first black women to host a television show

Then the House Un-American Activities Committee came for her — On September 22, 1950, musician Hazel Scott appeared in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. She’d been named as a subversive — another addition to a long list of those who were somehow plotting against America. Artists, Scott told the committee, “are eager and anxious to help, to serve…

Black Lives Matter

6 min read

She was one of the first black women to host a television show
She was one of the first black women to host a television show

Published in Timeline

·Jun 7, 2018

This woman shattered the gender barrier in pro baseball

When Toni Stone joined the Negro League, she became the first woman regular on a big-league team — “There’s always got to be a first in everything,” Toni Stone told Ebony in 1953. She knew what she was talking about. By that point, Stone had been the first in a lot of things: the first girl on her church’s baseball team; the first on a traveling barnstorming team…

Sports

6 min read

This woman shattered the gender barrier in pro baseball
This woman shattered the gender barrier in pro baseball

Published in Timeline

·May 9, 2018

Black Omnibus was a thoughtful response to a segregated and unequal America. Too bad it didn’t last

When the media wasn’t adequately representing black lives, Black Omnibus showcased black art and thought in effortless ways — In a 1973 performance of “Don’t Explain,” the singer, actress, and dancer Paula Kelly sits alone, bathed in a golden light, sometimes vignetted with a soft seventies bokeh. Her performance took place in an episode of Black Omnibus, a variety and public affairs show hosted by James Earl Jones. …

Black Lives Matter

5 min read

Black Omnibus was a thoughtful response to a segregated and unequal America. Too bad it didn’t last
Black Omnibus was a thoughtful response to a segregated and unequal America. Too bad it didn’t last

Published in Timeline

·Apr 20, 2018

Music as the self. Music as politics. Music as power. Welcome to the all-black music journal ‘The Cricket’

‘The true voices of Black Liberation have been the Black musicians’ — In his 1966 essay “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music),” music critic Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) wrote, “We are bodies responding differently, a (total) force, like against you. You react to push it, re-create it. Resist it. It is the opposite pressure producing (in this…

Music

5 min read

Music as politics. Music as power. Welcome to the all-black music journal ‘The Cricket’
Music as politics. Music as power. Welcome to the all-black music journal ‘The Cricket’

Published in Timeline

·Mar 15, 2018

When the white establishment ignored these black photographers, the Kamoinge collective was born

Based in 1960s Harlem, they challenged the way stories of black lives were told, and who got to tell them — There’s a picture of Miles Davis, black-and-white, date unknown, with the long, lean figure of bassist Ron Carter at his side. Miles aficionados can deduce that it’s from the era of his second quintet, sometime between 1964 and 1968. Davis is seated, his body slightly bowed, trumpet pressed close to…

Photography

6 min read

When the white establishment ignored these black photographers, the Kamoinge collective was born
When the white establishment ignored these black photographers, the Kamoinge collective was born

Published in Timeline

·Feb 22, 2018

The first black-owned record label in the U.S. wanted to “uplift” black people through music

It rose, then fell — and popularized the kinds of songs it set out to defeat — In 1923, an ad for Black Swan Records placed in The Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine, helpfully sorted its consumer base into three groups. The first group, it said, was the one that supported black artists and black production, but their quality filter was a bit off. The second “class of…

Music

6 min read

The first black-owned record label in the U.S. wanted to “uplift” black people through music
The first black-owned record label in the U.S. wanted to “uplift” black people through music
Ashawnta Jackson

Ashawnta Jackson

Writer and record collector. Sometimes not in that order. More at www.heyjackson.net

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