by | Dec 1, 2016 9:05 am | Comments (1)
There was no featured artist, and it had already been raining for two days straight, but that didn’t keep a small group of devotees from showing up at the Outer Space on Wednesday night for what could be the longest-running open mic in the New Haven area. For good reason.
by | Nov 14, 2016 9:05 am | Comments (0)
Monday’s programs on WNHH take another stab at making sense of the election, dig into the fascinating world of emotional intelligence, and get poetic.
by | Oct 28, 2016 12:04 pm | Comments (2)
Yale School Of Music Photo
Ruff, who retires this year after a long and illustrious career.
For jazz musician and professor Willie Ruff, the Langston Hughes Project show on Friday — with spoken-word poet Kenyon Adams and the Ron McCurdy Quartet — echoes back to another time in his life in New Haven, when Langston Hughes himself came to town.
by | Oct 27, 2016 8:22 am | Comments (0)
The first time performance artist Kenyon Adams read Langston Hughes’ epic, emotional Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz, he was young and not totally floored by the poetry of each word, the urgency and grace in every line, every verse, every mood. He let the poem languish for a few years. And then something happened that would change the way he thought about it forever.
by | Oct 20, 2016 5:00 pm | Comments (0)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
Hanifa Washington, curator of Literary Happy Hour.
City Wide Open Studios (CWOS) Weekend at the Goffe Street Armory was not just for gigantic, interactive games and eclectic visual art. A “Literary Happy Hour” tour was also in the offing as spoken word, story telling and poetry performances occupied spaces in the Armory alongside sculptures, paintings and installations.
Continue reading ‘Armory Art With A Literary Happy Hour Chaser’
by | Aug 19, 2016 12:17 pm | Comments (1)
Chris Randall Photo
Washington: Assuming Lit Happy Hour reins.
When Hanifa Washington stepped to the front of 101 Threads to deliver her poem “Beneath the Sea,” still inky on paper and new on her tongue, she didn’t have any idea what Literary Happy Hour was, or exactly what she was getting herself into.
by | Jul 18, 2016 7:27 am | Comments (2)
David Yaffe-Bellany Photo
George Edwards, a former Black Panther.
George Edwards was an Air Force instructor working at a base in Ohio when he realized he was “a voluntary slave.”
On Memorial Day 1960, Edwards — an intense, sharp-eyed man who served in the New Haven branch of the Black Panthers Party — heard a recording of a speech by Malcolm X that made him question his service to the United States.
“I had a serious confrontation with history, politics, racism. I was becoming conscious of the world,” he said. “This man had shown a light to the darkness of my brain.”
Continue reading ‘2 Generations Of Activists Mix It Up At Hip-Hop Conference’
by | Jun 6, 2016 1:53 pm | Comments (0)
Ifeanyi Awachie Photo
Bethune.
Michael Bethune and Kejuan Simmons, a.k.a. young rap duo N‑Finity Muzik, paced energetically back and forth in the grass in front of the stage, closing the distance between them and their audience. Multicolored dashikis, hanging in a vendor’s tent, flapped in the breeze. Community members and staff in purple T‑shirts circled the sunny park.
by | May 26, 2016 7:10 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Willis-Abdurraqib.
Rhodes.
Today’s episodes on WNHH radio dive headfirst into the world of contemporary poetry, teach listeners a few new camera tricks, explore interracial dating, and debate the merits of drinking on and off the job.
by | May 12, 2016 7:11 am | Comments (0)
Poet, performer and curator Ifeanyi Awachie had a vision: Build a safe and supportive space in New Haven where writers from different backgrounds could convene, listen to each other, and learn about each other’s work, while kicking back after the workweek. She did her research: Nothing like it existed in the Elm City. So she would will it into existence, she reasoned.
by | May 5, 2016 2:52 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Lasley.
Marsh.
The Great Give marathon is over and WNHH radio programming is back to normal! Today’s programs delve into the daily duties of Connecticut’s secretary of the state, ask what performative film looks like in the year 2016, tease out the difference between contemporary and classical dance, and more.
by | May 2, 2016 7:15 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Smith.
Jasmine Smith had a story to tell. But she didn’t want the audience to stop at listening to her voice.
by | Mar 31, 2016 2:23 pm | Comments (0)
Judy Sirota Rosenthal Photos
Alasdair MacRae asks the audience to throw “snow” on cue.
Winter 2010 — the longest, whitest winter Scotland has seen in years — and it’s karaoke night at a pub in Kelso, a quaint and funny town nestled in the Scottish borders where a conference has just taken place.
Center stage, professor Colin Syme is leading the charge on a night of academics gone wild, bumping and grinding with colleagues atop a table as lights pulse in the background and pop music seethes through the speakers. Snowed-in pubgoers laugh and drink and strip on all sides, reveling in this messy, unexpected winter bacchanal.
At the fringes of it, peering miserably into her pint of bitter red ale, is uptight academic Prudencia Hart, feeling every ounce of out of place.
by | Mar 29, 2016 4:11 pm | Comments (6)
Paul Bass Photo
Aleskie with WNPR’s John Dankosky and Catie Talarski and A&I’s Alex Ripp at last year’s lineup announcement.
When Mary Lou Aleskie took over the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in September 2005, she didn’t know that much about New Haven. She’d moved to the Elm City from San Diego for the position, so everything was new to her. Neighborhoods sprang up, full of possibility, performance venues popped out of the woodwork. She was greeted by a local arts scene that, for a city of just over 130,000 people, was more “jam-packed” than she ever could have anticipated.
Aleskie hasn’t stopped trying to nail down the rhythm of New Haven, or satiate its hunger for local and international arts. Over 11 years, she has seen — and enacted — considerable change, taking the community into account whenever possible.
As she prepared to announce on Tuesday the festival’s year 21 programming, the Independent had the chance to talk about how Arts & Ideas has changed, what truly involving community looks like, and what new steps have her excited looking ahead to summer 2016 and beyond.
by | Mar 28, 2016 7:51 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery photo
Cormier.
It was standing room only by the time writer, performance poet, and musician Ken Cormier stood up at the mike, kicking off the last night of the Wobbling Roof Revue, organized by musicians Paul Belbusti and Lys Guillorn at Never Ending Books on State Street.
The event Friday night featured an eclectic lineup of performers from New Haven and elsewhere for a variety show that stayed true to the phrase — and kept a rapt audience in the seats — from beginning to end.
by | Mar 24, 2016 7:30 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Et egressus est a filia Sion omnis decor ejus, sang Sherezade Panthaki, perched over the book of music open in front of her. The Latin rolled off her tongue, landing on the floor in gold droplets. Facti sunt principes ejus velut arietes non invenientes pascua.
by | Mar 17, 2016 4:02 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Hanley.
Are you sick of Sequel Bloat, the phenomenon slowly taking over movie theaters, television shows, and even webcasts around the country?
That question was among those explored on the latest WNHH radio programs.
by | Feb 16, 2016 2:39 pm | Comments (1)
Kira Baum Photo
Belbusti and Guillorn.
Musicians Paul Belbusti (a.k.a. Mercy Choir) and Lys Guillorn have split a lot of bills together. They even did an EP in 2013 called Trouble, in which Belbusti wrote the music and Guillorn wrote the words for the first song; then, for the second song, they switched roles. So in November, when Belbusti asked Guillorn if she wanted to collaborate in putting together a month-long Friday-night residency at Never Ending Books on State Street — a “variety show,” according to Belbusti — she agreed.
The result is the Wobbling Roof Revue, which features 28 acts performing 20-minute sets each across four Fridays in March, in a lineup that ranges from musicians and storytellers to a tarot reader, a comedian, and a trivia meister.
Continue reading ‘Wobbling Roof Revue Takes Over Never Ending Books’
by | Jan 19, 2016 1:04 pm | Comments (0)
The drums sounded like they were 20 feet tall in the Peabody’s cavernous main hall. A crowd of people packed into one half of it, drawn by the propulsive beat. A saxophone and whistle floated over the top. Musician Michael Mills had already gotten a dozen people to join him in the percussion section and was still handing out drums, instructing people what to do. When the groove settled in, Mills approached the mike and began to chant.
“The drums speak,” he said.
by | Dec 2, 2015 3:41 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Ifeanyi Awachie.
Elizabeth Larkin.
WNHH radio’s shows todays featured discussions about federal drug and corruption investigations, how New Haveners are using poetry as a platform for social change, and a new book club suggestion.
by | Nov 6, 2015 7:20 am | Comments (0)
Ellen Elmendorp Photo
In a back room at the Yale University Art Gallery last year, a half-record, half-video looking machine — the proper name is actually an anamorphic projection, which is what happens when 35mm film is transferred to DVD, and meets a cold rolled steel table and cylinder — sprang up during the institution’s exhibition on Contemporary Art/South Africa. Over eight minutes, viewers saw ripples, lines and semi-human forms rise up out of the white, slow-spinning cinematographic ground, and take flight as another dizzying suite of images began.
by | Oct 23, 2015 6:00 am | Comments (0)
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens, the mid-20th-century American modernist writer, wrote the famous poem “An Ordinary Evening In New Haven” is featured on this day’s episode of “This Day In New Haven History.”
by | Oct 22, 2015 7:17 am | Comments (0)
A sea captain, home from a very long voyage, anchored in the harbor and raced toward town to find his family.
It just happened to be a Sunday in New Haven, and he found his wife on the way to church. Overcome with emotion, he kissed her, but paid the price. The captain was fined by the church fathers for expressing such emotion on the Lord’s day.
by | Oct 21, 2015 6:32 am | Comments (1)
View of 19th-century East Rock by George Drurie.
Who says New Haven isn’t a great town for cogitating writers and poets looking for new inspirations for pastorals?
You don’t need to go to the countryside or to East Rock for the quiet that promotes inspiration.
Our peripatetic poet Sam Woodworth found his in the deep quiet of … New Haven mud.
by | Oct 20, 2015 7:22 am | Comments (0)
Do you recognize our town in these words? A place …
Where liberal minds have happy sway attained,
By priests unshackled, as by crime unstained!
Where genius meets a rich and sure reward,
Where speculation never meets with fraud!
Where female virtue fears no hapless flaw,
For chastity is here secured by law;
Where narrow Prejudice is hunted down,
And Superstition drove from every town