‘Kind of Blue’: Senior Debuts Jazz-Inspired Play About Male Identity // UNC Student Kuamel Stewart

Full article here // Excerpt below

Senior communication studies major Kuamel Stewart is passionate about jazz music and playwriting. He combines those two loves into one with the Feb. 23 debut of “Kind of Blue,” a play he wrote that explores male identity. The title of the play comes from the 1959 Miles Davis’ modal jazz album, “Kind of Blue.”

[...]

Preview night is 6 p.m. Feb. 23. The play will be performed Feb. 24-28 at 7 p.m. and Feb. 26-27 at 2 p.m in Playmakers Theatre, 202 E. Cameron Ave. After the Feb. 24 show, theater-goers can enjoy a free live performance of Miles Davis’ iconic album at 10 p.m. in Room 1201 of the Kenan Music Building as part of the Carolina Jazz Festival. Free tickets to the play are available at the Memorial Hall Box Office in person, by calling (919) 843-3333 or online at http://memorialhall.unc.edu. On March 1, the cast and crew will hold a “talk back” session to further explore the themes of masculinity at 7 p.m. in the Carmichael Dormitory ballroom.

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What is the Future of Traditional Church Music? // From the Daily Episcopalian

Full article here // Excerpt below

By George Clifford

Recently, I’ve participated in, or overheard, several conversations about church music. A well-known, respected authority on Episcopal liturgy openly declined to attend Morning Prayer at a conference we both attended because the service included Taizé music. These experiences evoked memories of conversations in my former parish between parishioners who wanted a variety of contemporary music (Taizé, jazz, guitars, praise choruses, etc.) and those who wanted only traditional music (i.e., classical, chant, or from the 1982 Hymnal).

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Singing Hallelujah with Fear in Your Heart // Arcade Fire and the Suburban Soul

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Paul Harvey

Has there been a major pop group more concerned with exploring personal anxieties, aspirations, and narratives through music defined so fundamentally by religious themes? The turmoil and paranoia of the last decade—wars, attacks, economic crashes, myriad color-coded fears—run through Arcade Fire’s three full-length records: Funeral, Neon Bible, and The Suburbs. The newest effort induces a tour of previous decades, when suburbia seemed (but only seemed) to offer placidity and refuge from the wilderness downtown.

[...]

From their debut, Funeral, and then most obviously and grandiosely in their last production, Neon Bible, religious desire, frustration, and anger define the lyrics. For some of the band’s critics, the group lays it on a bit thick. On Neon Bible, a crashing church organ accompanies a song about crippling inhibition and self-consciousness:

My body is a cage
that keeps me from dancing with the one I love
but my mind holds the key

set my body free, set my spirit free...

And a symphonic explosion of sound highlights the climax to “Intervention”:

Been working for the church while your life falls apart
been singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart

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What Does Mercy Look Like? // From NY Times' Lens Blog

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Niko Koppel

Mercy is commonly defined as compassion, forgiveness, kindness or an act of piety. But photographs of prisoners reaching through bars, a wrestler being contorted by masked men and an infant dressed for burial are among the many interpretations of the word in the book “The Mercy Project/Inochi,” created and curated by James Whitlow Delano.

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Haiti’s Scars, and Its Soul, Find Healing on Walls // Haitian Murals Find Sanctuary in Restoration Project

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Damien Cave

Colorful and sad, beautiful but cracked, the three remaining murals of the Episcopal Trinity Cathedral received the soft afternoon sun after last year’s earthquake only because the rest of the church had collapsed.

Haitians walking by looked heartbroken. All 14 murals had been internationally treasured. Painted in the early 1950s during an artistic renaissance here, they depicted biblical scenes from a proud, local point of view: with Jesus carrying a Haitian flag as he ascended to heaven; and a last supper that, unlike some famous depictions, does not portray Judas with darker skin than the other disciples.

“All of this was painted from a Haitian perspective,” said the Rev. David César, the church’s main priest and its music school director. He marveled at the image miraculously still standing: Judas, with the white beard and wavy white hair often assigned to God himself.

It was his favorite mural, he said, and now, it is being saved.

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North Africa's Hip Hop Protest Music // On the Media

Full story here



In the midst of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the protests elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, a group of Libyan exiles who run a website called Khalas noticed one surprising common thread in the voicing of discontent … rap music. Across the region rap artists were providing the soundtrack to protests in the streets. So Khalas decided to contribute by releasing a mixtape of their own. Khalas co-founder Abdulla Darrat talks about the influence of hip hop in this latest round of protests.

Tonight at Duke // 'Jazz Mama' Documentary Showing

'Jazz Mama' documentary film screening and discussion with filmmaker Petna Ndaliko and African Studies scholar Chérie Rivers

Tuesday, February 22 @ 6:45pm
0014 Westbrook
FREE Pizza & Beverages

Does the media’s focus on stories of violence condition us to overlook the strength, resiliency and hope of women in Congo? Jazz Mama is both a film and a movement inspired by the uncompromising strength and dignity of Congolese women, despite the obstacles and violence they face. Jazz Mama aims to bring awareness to gender-based violence in Congo without reducing the women to victims whose lives are circumscribed by rape. While sexual violence is a devastating problem, these women are often not only survivors but pillars of the community.

Film Chronicles Persecution of Monks in Algeria // "Of Gods and Men"

Full article here // Excerpt below

"Of Gods and Men" is a French film that's set in a monastery in Algeria in the 1990s. It's loosely based on the story of seven monks who were kidnapped and decapitated in 1996. At the time, Algeria was facing a violent Islamist insurgency.

[...]

"Of Gods and Men" has been a surprisingly successful film at the box office in France. And the actor who plays Brother Christian, the prior of the monastery, is a very well-known French movie star, Lambert Wilson, who is better known in this country for playing the Merovingian in "The Matrix" movies and who joins us from New York.

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Juror for New Creation's 2011 Juried Arts Exhibit Announced

The juror for NCAG's 2011 Juried Arts Exhibit, Carolyn Butler, is a North Carolina-based artist working in digital and new media. Her work has been shown throughout the south and northeast, winning awards at the Green Rice Gallery, in Charlotte, NC and the Reece Museum in Johnson City, TN. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Duke Youth Academy at Duke University, and recently was awarded an artist residency at the prestigious Vermont Studio Center. Butler received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and will complete the MFA program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill this spring.

Playing for Change // Songs Around The World

You've probably seen at least one of the videos from this album (like the one below), but be sure to check out the entire project from Playing for Change.

Monday at Duke // Free Show in Reynolds Auditorium: Mayda Del Valle

Mayda Del Valle (2001 National Poetry Slam Winner)

Monday, February 14 @ 8:00 p.m.
Reynolds Theater, Duke University
FREE SHOW

More info

Photography and the Education of a Doctor // Learning from Patients

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Lucy Hood

A stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff and a few other tools are all pediatrician John Moses needs to obtain basic information about the health of his patients. But when he wants to go beyond the clinical setting and find out more about their health issues -- the whys and wherefores of teen pregnancy, for example - he puts the medical instruments down and picks up a camera.

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“Enhancing My Medical Education Through Photography," A Talk By Pediatrician/Photographer John Moses from Center for Documentary Studies on Vimeo.

Drawn Into Scripture: Arts and the Life of the Church // 2011 Convocation & Pastors’ School @ Duke Divinity

While the church’s celebrations and teachings follow a steady cadence, we continue to seek new and vibrant ways of interpreting the Word. The arts – in their varied forms – can provide a source of inspiration.

Join us as professor and musician Jeremy Begbie, author Marilynne Robinson, professor and musician Anthony Kelley and the BLAK Ensemble, and the Rev. Dr. Lillian Daniel help us explore art’s illuminating power.

Together, we will experience the scriptures from a new perspective and find imaginative ways of expanding the life of the church.

More info

In London, Climate Change Comes to the Stage // "Greenland" at the National Theater

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Matt Wolf

It’s not often that the mundane activities of an audience directly fly in the face of what is happening on stage. But there I was the other night at “Greenland,” the National Theatre’s admonitory potpourri of a drama about climate change, when I became all too aware of my fellow spectators crumpling packets of this or that or popping plastic water bottles like (very) cheap champagne.

“Hang on!” I wanted to call out, as images of the plastic trash-turned-land mass that is gradually despoiling our earth unfurled before me. (The production runs in repertory at the Lyttelton through April 2). “Is no one paying this show any heed?” Or perhaps the sorry truth is that even plays considerably better than “Greenland” can hector till the cows come home, and yet we still aren’t as conscientious as we ought to be. Recycle, recycle, recycle, I muttered all the way home.

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Learning How to Transpose // How the Arts Inform Christianity

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Wes (Transpositions)

...What are the methods for putting the arts in conversation with Christian thought and practice? How do we describe the relationship between the arts and Christianity in the context of interdisciplinary studies?

One relationship we should discount right away is illustration. If we are going to take the conversation between the arts and Christianity seriously, we have to move beyond thinking about the arts as mere illustrative tools for theological reality. Even though Christians are really good at “finding God at the movies” and other methods of mining the arts for truth, I believe that the arts have more to offer than this.

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The Glen Workshop // Acts of Attention: Art as Discovery

The Glen Workshop is a unique opportunity offered by Image. Pick up a brochure from the bulletin boards above the student folders or next to the student lounge, or get more info below.

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The Glen Workshop 2011

Writing classes. Art classes. A seminar on arts and aesthetics. A retreat option. The Glen Workshop combines an intensive learning experience with a lively festival of the arts.

Glen East, in its first year, will be held in the Pioneer Valley, one of New England’s most beautiful and intellectually vibrant spots, home to some of the country’s oldest renowned colleges and known for the natural beauty of the Connecticut River and rolling green terrain.

Glen West, celebrating seventeen years, takes place in the stark, dramatic beauty of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and within easy reach of the rich cultural, artistic, and spiritual traditions of northern New Mexico.

More info

At Night, Protest Gives Way to Poetry // Poetry and Performances in Tahrir Square

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Anthony Shadid

It was a few minutes after midnight on Sunday, when an unaccustomed rain washed Cairo’s somnolent streets, as Ahmed Abdel-Moneim walked with friends across a bridge that was a passageway to a parallel capital in Tahrir Square, an idea as much as a place.

“My vision goes a lot farther than what my eyes can see,” he said.

Egypt’s revolution is a contest of ultimatums — chaos and revolution, freedom and submission — but its arena of Tahrir Square becomes quieter at night, the cacophony of rebellion giving way to a stage of poetry, performance and politics.

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Call for Submissions // 2011 Juried Arts Exhibit: "Places of Redemption"

Submissions for the 2011 Juried Arts Exhibit will be accepted March 16-18, 2011. Guidelines and submission forms will be available in a folder above the student mailboxes or as downloadable PDFs from the New Creation website (click here).

Google Takes Street View Into Art Museums // Art Project Preview

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Nick Bilton

Now that Google has conquered a majority of the earth’s major streets with its Google Street View project, the company is starting to move inside. It’s creating the Google Art Project, a virtual equivalent of 17 major art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Britain and National Gallery in London, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among many others.

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Sing Praises to God // Charles Pettee & FolkPsalm on Faith & Leadership

Full article here // Excerpt below

Musician Charles Pettee was reading a psalm one day when it occurred to him: This is a song! He began writing music based on Scripture and founded FolkPsalm, a band with a changing set of members ranging from Pettee performing solo to a full seven-piece band. Pettee hopes to make the ancient texts -- and their expression of God’s grace -- more accessible to audiences.

Keep reading...

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For those of you who were present when Charles and the group led worship in Goodson Chapel on January 19--or if you have seen or heard of FolkPsalm in other settings--what do you think of this project? Did you know that Charles often works with Duke Divinity professor Ellen Davis on texts for his songwriting? -- Sarah

Does One Need Sight to Grasp the World? // Brian Friel's 'Molly Sweeney' at Irish Rep (and Ken Medema)

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Ken Jaworowski

It takes two hours to watch “Molly Sweeney” at the Irish Repertory Theater. But you’ll spend much more time thinking about it afterward. A deeply moving meditation on hope, change and despair, it’s a compelling piece of theater, one in which the ending applause is only the beginning of the play’s effects.

Molly, who has been blind almost since birth, starts off by recounting her life, one blessed with friends and a recent marriage. Her ever-enthusiastic husband, Frank, embarks on a plan to restore her sight and seeks out Mr. Rice, a once-promising eye surgeon who has gone into near-seclusion. “What has she to lose?” Mr. Rice asks as he agrees to operate on her. That question will haunt them all.

Keep reading...

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Sidebar: This past weekend at the Calvin Symposium on Worship, I was blessed to be in a worship service and a songwriting workshop led by Ken Medema. Though blind from birth, Ken is one of the most effective songwriters and worship leaders I have come across. I encourage you to check out his work, and to consider this question: how do you think the lack of one of the five senses might hinder--or enhance--one's appreciation and/or creation of art and beauty?
-- Sarah

Lee Smith: A lifetime of paying attention | Faith & Leadership

See my latest interview with one of the iconic Southern writers of our time:

Lee Smith: A lifetime of paying attention | Faith & Leadership

Writing the Play His Curiosity Led Him To // Playwright Matthew Lopez and 'The Whipping Man'

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Felicia R. Lee

Matthew Lopez is ready for the question but continues to refine the answer. How did he, a self-described “foxhole Episcopalian” from the Florida Panhandle, the son of a Puerto Rican father and a Polish-Russian mother, come to write a play about a Jewish Confederate soldier and two former slaves raised as Jews who, in the charred wreck of a Virginia home after the Civil War, celebrate Passover together?

Keep reading...

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On a similar subject (sort of), a book club at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham looked this past month at Dara Horn's novel All Other Nights, about a Jewish spy in the Civil War.

15th-Cent. English Composer vs. Kinetic Typography // New York Polyphony's Rendition of Beata Progenies - Video + Free Download

Full article here // Excerpt below

It’s safe to say that Lionel Power (d. 1445) could never have imagined the digital world we live in. I doubt he even dreamed that his music (handwritten in a few books) would survive beyond his death much less be sung by a group of guys living in city 3,000 miles away more than 500 years in the future.

[See video below. Sidebar: This song will be part of (and actually the theme of) the Duke Chapel Vespers Ensemble's spring concert in April. Stay tuned.]

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Cairo Photographer Sees Hope in Turmoil // Scott Nelson Tells What It's Like

Full article here // Excerpt below

By The New York Times

Scott Nelson, 40, is a freelance photographer who works regularly for The New York Times. He’s from Denver but has been based in Cairo for a decade. For this post, he spoke with James Estrin late Saturday and followed that by elaborating on his experiences and expectations as a photojournalist and as a Cairo resident.

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Encounter 11 // Be Generative

Another conference deadline has been extended - this one for, Encounter 11 at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City, March 3 - 5, 2011. Do you know about the International Arts Movement?

Move On Up // Angélique Kidjo’s Songs that Inspire the Struggle

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Nancy Rosenbaum

In our interview yesterday morning, Vincent Harding spoke about the galvanizing power of song during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. He also lamented that today’s “hip-hop young people” have not produced a soundtrack for their generation that can express the “great need and desire for a better world.”

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“A Stone in Aberdaron” – Artist Reception

Artist, Nathaniel Hester, will speak about his work at a reception held at the Divinity School Library on Wednesday, February 2 at 12:20pm. Refreshments will be served. The exhibit, “A Stone in Aberdaron,” a collaborative bookmaking project of Daniel Tobin (Interim Dean of the School of Arts; Emerson College) and Nathaniel Hester (MDiv, Duke Divinity School, ’14) will be on display at the Divinity School Library through February 25, 2011.

In Britain, Separation of Art and State // David Wojnarowicz Ruckus

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Michael Kimmelman

For all the talk about one big, globalized art world, the trans-Atlantic gulf reasserted itself the other evening via a small but telling event. An overflow crowd of several hundred people, young and old, men and women, gay and straight, packed Starr Auditorium at the Tate Modern here to pay tribute to David Wojnarowicz, the artist and AIDS activist who died, at 37, from AIDS, in 1992.

Last week, on a visit to Los Angeles, the secretary of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, was still struggling to account for why he caved two months ago to Republican lawmakers and the leader of the Catholic League, a group that calls itself a defender of free speech. Mr. Clough told The Los Angeles Times that, among other things, fear of retaliatory budget cuts caused him to remove a video by Wojnarowicz from “Hide/Seek,” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, a show about same-sex themes in American portraiture.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, had declared an excerpt from the video, featuring ants crawling on a crucifix, “hate speech.”

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The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum // The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Kate Taylor

In the late 1970s, when Lonnie G. Bunch III had his first job at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, veterans of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black squadron, accused the museum of playing down their contributions during World War II. In response, the museum asked some of the African-Americans on staff to allow their faces to be used on mannequins, increasing the “black presence” in its exhibits.

“I didn’t do it,” Mr. Bunch said recently, who was among those asked. “That’s not the way I wanted to be part of a museum.”

Thirty years later Mr. Bunch, and African-American history itself, are part of a Smithsonian museum, but in a very different way. As the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Mr. Bunch, 58, is charged with creating an institution that embodies the story of black life in America.

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Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past // Exhibit at National Gallery Becomes a Crime Scene

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Celia W. Dugger

The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.

But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago.

“You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”

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The Charles Wesley of Sudan // The Muse of Church Revival in Sudan

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Jason Byassee

I think I met the Charles Wesley of the church of Sudan.

Just as Charles’ hymns powered the Methodist movement across the British Isles, the Americas, and now the Global South, so too did Mary Alueel Garang’s songs power a revival in the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS), helping to bring in millions of members during that country’s brutal two-decade long civil war. “I just found myself singing,” she explained when asked how she wrote so much and so movingly. If songs come to her, she writes them down, “if they are meaningful.” She herself describes their themes this way: “During the war there was suffering, we ran from place to place, but we encouraged people not to give up and to come to church. You can’t save your life on your own.”

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Saturday in Durham // New Creation Concert Series featuring David Johnston and Reynolds Chapman

New Creation Concert Series: Re-Imagining Contemporary Christian Music will kick off this weekend with a performance at Copa Vida Coffee, near West Campus. The idea of the concert series is geared toward providing opportunities for songwriters, both DDS students and others, to interface through performances and discussions about what it means to be a Christian songwriter. We'll start by hearing from Senior M.Div. David Johnston and recent DDS alum Reynolds Chapman. Come join us!

Saturday, January 29
6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Copa Vida

2816 Erwin Road #201

Durham, NC

For more information, email newcreationartsgroup@gmail.com or check out the Facebook event here.

Wednesday at Duke // Documentary Screening: 'Soldiers of Conscience'

Duke students, staff, and faculty are invited to a screening of the Emmy award-winning documentary Soldiers of Conscience (also endorsed by the US Army), hosted by a Divinity School working group that hopes to hold an event next fall on Veterans Day to honor the consciences of and heal moral injury among our service men and women. The documentary will be followed by a brief discussion and our first official planning meeting for the event.

Wednesday, January 26
5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
0014 Westbrook

For more information, contact lm172@duke.edu or visit the Facebook event page here.

‘Tukutendereza Yesu’ // Notes from the Global Church

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Philip Jenkins

I'm never convinced when Protestants claim to be people of the Bible alone. They are people of the Bible and the hymnbook, and the two volumes complement each other splendidly. As you sing, so you believe and so you pray—and so you learn much of your theology.

As Christian churches grow around the world, it is not surprising to find an astonishing efflorescence of hymn composition. We must avoid the loose term hymn writing, as so many of the creators are primarily oral art­ists, and only gradually do their works find their way into written form. But however they are made, the sheer abundance and quality of those hymns is overwhelming, whether in Yoruba or Swahili, Tamil or Zulu. Argu­ably, we live today in the golden age of Christian hymn-making.

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Bhargava Calls Prayer Space a Place to “Strengthen Oneself” // New Joint Space for Hindus and Buddhists at Duke

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Sony Rao

In a show of religious unity, Hindu and Buddhist student groups came together Saturday to inaugurate a new, shared prayer room in the Bryan Center.

Students, faculty and members of the Durham community gathered in the Breedlove Room to celebrate interfaith collaboration on campus and the official opening of the Hindu-Buddhist prayer space. Events included prayer ceremonies in the afternoon followed by a reception sponsored by the Duke University Faith Council.

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Reynolds Price // A Southern Writer, A Lyrical Gift

Full article here // Excerpt below

Reynolds Price, the acclaimed writer known for his evocative novels and stories about rural North Carolina, died in Durham yesterday. He was 77.

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Painting in Deadly Oil // From The NY Times' Lens Blog

Full article here // Excerpt below

Oil-soaked pelicans. Turtles caught midstroke in black ooze. Floating schools of dead fish. And then fishermen throwing out their catch.

In the visual coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, certain tableaus became pervasive. An image would move over the wires and photojournalists on the scene competed to match it. “Everyone was trying to make the same picture,” said Benjamin Lowy, “because it was very hard to articulate visually.” For one thing, he said, the spill was so vast.

Mr. Lowy, 31, a photographer with Reportage by Getty Images, found another way to capture the story. He focused on the oil itself as it collected on the water’s surface in phosphorescent, psychedelic swirls and paisleys, the result of different chemical mixtures, rates of oxidation and lighting angles.

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Tracy Radosevic: The Sounds of a Living Tradition // From Faith and Leadership

Full article here // Excerpt below

Because Bible stories were initially communicated orally -- with breath, sound and movement -- the sounds of the story still matter today, said storyteller Tracy Radosevic. Asking questions such as “Who was the audience?” and “What was going on socially, politically and economically?” when the story was first told allows the current meaning of the story to express itself through the teller, she said.

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CHRIST, CHURCH, CULTURE

Interested in hearing Andy Crouch, Makoto Fujimura, and Paul Weston (among others)? The student rate (100.00) for the C3 Conference, February 24 - 26, 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee makes this an affordable road trip and a great way to network. Check it out.

For Gay Arabs, a Place to Dance, and Break Down Walls // Crowds Come Out to Monthly New York Dance Party

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Chadwick Moore

Around midnight, upstairs in a small club on Avenue of the Americas, the pitch-black dance floor resounded with the rapid stomps and warbling, high-energy cries of the dabke, an Arab folk dance performed at weddings and other celebrations.

When the strobe lights flashed, they revealed a sea of raised hands. A man in the crowd removed his kaffiyeh, the traditional headdress worn by some Arab and Kurdish men, and whipped it around in the air.

[...]

This was a recent Saturday night at Habibi, a floating monthly dance party of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Arabs in New York. In a city that seems to offer activities for every conceivable gay subculture — one 700-entry directory lists support groups for, among others, gay vegans, pilots and sailing enthusiasts, along with 62 religion-based groups — Habibi is perhaps the only opportunity in New York for gay people of Middle Eastern descent to interact openly in an organized setting.

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The Vote In Sudan // On APM's The Story

All this week, people from Southern Sudan have been casting their vote in a referendum to decide if they should become their own nation. Twenty-year-old Nyuol Tong was born in Sudan. He spent much of his childhood surrounded by civil war and living in refugee camps, often writing poetry to express his hopes and desires for his country. He is now a student at Duke University, and will be traveling to Alexandria, Virginia on Friday to vote.

Listen here

The Healing Power of Music and Haiti Noir // The Arts in Haiti, One Year After the Earthquake

Click here to listen American Public Media's The Story's recent program on the healing power of the arts in Haiti one year after the devastating earthquake:

The healing power of music

Jean Montes grew up in Haiti. He attended the Holy Trinity School of Music before coming to the States to become a conductor and musician. When the earthquake struck one year ago this week, his thoughts were of his beloved school and students. Jean knew his country needed food, water and shelter - but they also needed hope. Since then he has taken hundreds of instruments to Holy Trinity to give to young students through the Haitian Youth Music Relief.

Haiti Noir

Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian - American writer. He had planned to fly into Haiti on the day of the earthquake - but he did not. When the quake happened, Patrick was safe in the US. Later, he went to Haiti to help the people. He's made some sense of his own emotion through his contribution to the new book Haiti Noir.

International Arts Movement

"The world is not as it ought to be:"

This is the vision of the International Arts Movement whose focus is to call on art to address dehumanization. If you're interested in learning more about how you can be a part of a movement interested in wrestling with issues of art and faith with the hope of inspiring and engaging the culture, check out their website and mark your calendars for their upcoming conference, Encounter 11 - Be Generative, March 3 - 5 in NYC.

The Handwritten Letter, an Art All but Lost, Thrives in Prison // Magazine Gives Prisoners a Link to World Outside

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Jeremy W. Peters

To the Georgia Department of Corrections he is inmate No. 544319, in prison on a five-year sentence for drug possession. But to the editors of Maxim, he is Mike Bolick, a faithful reader and regular letter writer who has loopy penmanship and an eye for beautiful cover models.

Mr. Bolick has become known at Maxim over the years for sending cover girls letters through the magazine with the hope that they will agree to be his pen pals. He is gracious and self-effacing, complimenting their beauty while asking them to please excuse his poor spelling and punctuation. He has plans to get his G.E.D. to remedy that, he explained in a recent letter to the pin-up girl Rachelle Leah.

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Poetry Is Not a Luxury // Words That Shimmer

Below is an excerpt from an essay referenced by Elizabeth Alexander in the show "Words That Shimmer" from Krista Tippett On Being.


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Audre Lorde

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.

As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny, and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.

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Going Naked as a Sign // Jon Watts' "Clothe Yourself in Righteousness" Project

Clothe Yourself in Righteousness is a pretty interesting project that completed its fundraising just last month and is now in the production stage. Check out the video and/or brief description below, and "like" it on Facebook.

The Early Quakers (“Friends”, as they are often known) sought to break down the apathy of their countrymen, reminding them that Christianity began as a radical movement of action and personal commitment, now diluted by the rites, rituals and power dynamics of the modern church.

In order to make their point, Quakers often found themselves creating spectacles, such as interrupting a Sunday service in a large Anglican Church to loudly debate the theology of the church with the presiding pastor. Such behavior was often rewarded with arrest, and many Early Friends spent time in jail, sometimes losing their lives and often losing their property or other valuable resources.

After reading a research paper for the Earlham School of Religion by his friend Maggie Harrison, Jon Watts decided to dedicate his creative energy to exploring "going naked as a sign", both literally and figuratively.

More info

This Month in Raleigh // Shen Yun Performing Arts Preserves Ancient Forms

On January 22, the Shen Yun Performing Arts group will be in Raleigh at Memorial Auditorium in the Progress Energy Center. The performance is a sort of blending of the arts with culture and spirituality--the musical, dance and other techniques cannot be separated from the performers' lifestyles and mindset. The company is also making a bit of a political statement in seeking to recover art forms that the Chinese Communist Party has destroyed.

From the group's website:

Over the past 60-plus years under Chinese Communist Party rule - and especially during campaigns such as the Cultural Revolution—much of China’s traditional culture has been destroyed. But China has a 5,000-year history steeped in rich values and the idea that humanity and the divine are intertwined. This idea is built right into the name "Shen Yun," which in context translates as “the beauty of divine beings dancing.”

At a time when the influence of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism was strong in the Middle Kingdom, art was a means of connecting with the higher universe. Artists cultivated virtue and engaged in study and meditation, because they believed that to create true art worthy of the heavens, there must first be inner beauty and purity. Today, Shen Yun’s artists follow in this noble tradition.

Click here for ticketing info.

Our New Band Of The Day 2010 Playlist // From Guardian.Co.UK

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Paul Lester

From oOoOO to How To Dress Well to DJ Nate to Teengirl Fantasy to Drake, many 2010 artists shared a penchant for messing with R&B, playing with the tempo or, literally in Nate's case, taking a soul tune like Deniece Williams's 1977 hit Free and putting it through the studio mincer. What I really like is the way it all drifts together so seamlessly – it might be more down to accident than an active free exchange of ideas, but you can play MillionYoung's Pilfer, Toro Y Moi's Freak Love and Washed Out's Belong next to Drake's The Resistance and they sound as though they all used the same producer. There was also confluence between Girl Unit's dubstep, DJ Nate's fancy footwurk and the witch house/drag of people like Salem (not featured here) and Balam Acab.

New Band Of The Day - Best of 2010

Keep reading...

The L.A Times lists its Top 10 Theater/Art/Architecture/Classical/Jazz of 2010

The L.A. Times has its Top 10 lists up for the The Year in The Arts, 2010. Each are listed/linked below by medium. Happy New Year! -- Leif

Top 10 / Theater

Top 10 / Art

Top 10 / Architecture

Top 10 / Classical Music

Top 10 / Jazz

Evolving Faith(s)

The most recent episode of onBeing explores the question of "how American culture's encounter with religious ideas and people has evolved in the past decade." Listen to the program by following this link.

Cambodian Art Emerges from Horrors of Murderous Past

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Robert Turnbull

PHNOM PENH — Slowly but surely, Cambodia’s visual arts’ scene has been emerging from the shadow of the Pol Pot era, nurtured by a clutch of mostly Western-owned galleries dotted around the capital. Years of faith and investment are finally paying off.

The Arts in 2010 // 'Spider-Man' to Facebook to Arcade Fire

Memorable Moments of 2010: Arts

Scholars Say Chronicler of Black Life Passed for White // Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Jean Toomer's 'Cane'

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Felicia R. Lee

Renown came to Jean Toomer with his 1923 book “Cane,” which mingled fiction, drama and poetry in a formally audacious effort to portray the complexity of black lives. But the racially mixed Toomer’s confounding efforts to defy being stuck in conventional racial categories and his disaffiliation with black culture made him perhaps the most enigmatic writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Now Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard scholar, and Rudolph P. Byrd, a professor at Emory University, say their research for a new edition of “Cane” documents that Toomer was “a Negro who decided to pass for white.”

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"In a dark time the eye begins to see" // A first glance at Bernd Brunner's new book "Moon: A Brief History"

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Cornelia Dean

Every faith and culture, it seems, kept an eye on the Moon, setting Passover, Easter, Ramadan, Tet and other observances according to the lunar calendar. The Buddha was supposed to have achieved enlightenment by the light of the full Moon, and as belief in a Moon goddess faded with the advent of Christianity, Mr. Brunner tells us, Mary became associated with the Moon. // Read On...

Do you have time for Beauty? Do you have time for God?

The holiday rush and shopping crush of this time of year can often blind us to the beauty and grace to be found all around us. And just as many in Bethlehem didn't recognize anything special about a young couple with a new born baby two thousand plus years ago, we too are often profoundly ignorant of the beautiful and the divine in our midst. It is in the spirit of this basic fact that I pass along this Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post article from 2007 which documents what happened when arguably the greatest living violinist played incognito in the D.C. subway one morning. The Post article asks the question "Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you?" but we might also ask, for those professing faith, "Do you have time for God? Shouldn't you?" Enjoy! -- Leif

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Gene Weingarten

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? // Keep Reading...