G-Magazine Now

Michael Jackson's "This Is It" DVD Trailer

Pop music legend Michael Jackson's This Is It film DVD will finally hit store shelves in January 2010.  The highly anticipated DVD is expected to break sales records.  Check out the DVD trailer below.  It comes with many special extras that were not seen in the movie.

Enjoy!

Uptown Backs The Harlem Renaissance To City Center

 

We may be approaching the winter solstice, but there is definitely a breeze of springtime at the City Center Theater. It is provided by Uptown a new ballet by Matthew Rushing for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Uptown is true dance theater ensemble work, which chronicles the Harlem Renaissance.

The ballet opens with an old “Victrola” phonograph on stage in a single pool of light. The song "No More Auction Block" begins to play as a series of photographic images take us from slavery, though the northern migration, and to our final destination Harlem. This section is bravely void of dance becoming a visual overture.

We are introduced to Victor our narrator, masterfully portrayed by Amos J. Machanic, Jr., Victor takes us uptown guiding us through the streets, sights, and sounds of the Harlem of the 1920s. It was as if the images found in the sepia toned James Van Der Zee photographs that captured that era were suddenly released.

The second and third sections entitled "Welcome to Harlem" and "Rent Party" are homage to the effervescent and raucous mood of uptown street life. The period costumes, set design, music, and most importantly the movement and staging immediately transport us back to the heyday of Harlem. The audience is treated to glimpses of the swing dances era, with its buoyant and exciting lifts.

Uptown takes a decided turn from an entertaining depiction to thought provoking social commentary in "Great Minds." Mr. Rushing creates two contracting solos set to the words of W.E.B. DuBois (himself) and Zora Neale Hurston (performed by Ruby Dee). His choice here is significant, these were two individuals whose writings and philosophies were from diametrically opposing points of view. Dr. DuBois represented the established intelligencia and promoted the Negro bourgeoisie, while Ms. Hurston preserved the stories of “simply folk” that had lived in her hometown of Eatonville, FL. Performed by Vernard J. Gilmore and Briana Reed respectively, both dancers embodied the timeless eloquence of these two formidable personalities.

In subsequent sections we visit the Savoy Ballroom with its battling bands, meet Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, and lament with Langston Hughes. We “shuffle along” and delight in the backstage antics of a Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle production. Eventually our guide Victor takes us to the Cotton Club for an elegant white tie and tails finale.

Celebrating Donny: A True Celebration

By Walter Rutledge | G-Magazine Now contributing author

On October 11, veteran stage performer Ty Stephens presented Celebrating Donny, a tribute to music great Donny Hathaway. Two performances at 5:30 and 8pm were offered at the Triad Theater in New York City. The intimate cabaret setting of the Triad was the ideal setting for this informal yet very personal celebration.

The evening began with a haunting rendition of "For All We Know," a song featured on Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (1972) and later on A Donny Hathaway Collection (1990). Mr. Stephens performed "For All We Know" with an honesty and mature pathos that seemed to channel Donny among us. The enthusiastic standing room only crowd was spellbound by this poignant interpretation.

The seamless transition into his second selection, "Do You Know Donny" established Mr. Stephens as a master showman; written and performed by Ty, he immediately changed the mood to upbeat and engaging. The song serviced as both prolog and epilog of the production. Celebrating Donny then took us from Donny Hathaway’s beginnings as a three year old gospel singer living in St. Louis' Carr Square housing project, through is early success as songwriter, musician and solo performer, to his memorable partnering with Roberta Flack and his tragic and all-too-soon suicide in 1979.

Joining Ty onstage was a stellar cast of performers including Branice McKenzie, Marvel Allen, Gary Brown and Keith Fluitt. This cast of seasoned performers was impressive in solos, duets, and group harmonies. Allen and Fluitt were pure magic in "I Who Have Nothing" and "You Are My Heaven," McKenzie and Stephens displayed great chemistry in "Be Real Black For Me" and "You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling," and Brown gave a masterful performance of "A Song For You." Narration containing biographical information performed by the entire cast was interspersed throughout the production; this enriched the musical chronology of the life of this extremely talented artist.

The aforementioned were just a few of the many standout moments in the ninety-minute production. It would be remiss of me not to mention "Givin Up," which gave the male cast a moment to shine. Triad Theater managing director Lee Summers joined the men on stage for an all male tour de force performance. Musical director and keyboardist Richard Cummings, Jr. lead, percussionist Neil Clarke, bassist Gene Torres, drummer Damon Duwehite and R.T. Taylor on guitar to musical perfection.

This production has been a labor of love for Mr. Stephens, he has been developing and refining it for over seventeen years. Ty first debuted Celebrating Donny in 1992 with performances in New York City at La Cave and B. Smith’s. Over the years Celebrating Donny has been presented at Ashford & Simpson’s Sugar Bar, and excerpts were also presented at B.B. King’s as part of the Black2Broadway event featuring Phoebe Snow, and as a fundraiser for Stanley Kinard’s run for public office in Brooklyn, NY.

We commend Ty Stephens; for as we all know history that is not recorded is history forgotten. This fitting tribute marks the 30th anniversary of Donny Hathaway’s death and his sixty-fourth birthday. By celebrating the many accomplishments of Donny Hathaway we are celebrating a golden era in American music; a time when music (not beats) and lyrics (not chants and rants) glorified the human experience.

Celebrating Donny is a true celebration.

Jay-Z, Will & Jada Pinkett-Smith Invest Money On 'Fela!'

 

by Monica Herrera | Billboard magazine

Jay-Z, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have officially signed on as co-producers of Fela!, a new musical about Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti opening November 23 on Broadway. The news confirms weeks of speculation that the three would back the show.

 
Although a rep for Fela! did not say how large of an investment the celebrities are making, their endorsement alone gives Fela!'s profile a significant boost just a week before its premiere. "There's going to be an enormous incentive for people to investigate Fela when they know that Jay-Z and Will Smith are all rabid fans," Rikki Stein, Kuti's former co-manager and the executor of his estate, recently told Billboard. "It's a sign that the underground is moving overground."
 
Fela! will help find a larger audience for Kuti, who pioneered Afrobeat from the sounds of James Brown and West African high-life music, became a political icon in his native Nigeria and earned the admiration of everyone from Paul McCartney to the Brazilian singer Gilberto Gil before dying in 1997. Stein plans to capitalize on this exposure to cement his legacy as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
 
"I have an abiding regret that Fela never achieved the recognition he deserved during his lifetime," Stein says. "We have a long row to hoe in terms of general knowledge and acceptance."
 
In addition to greenlighting Fela!, Kuti's estate has licensed his catalog to the newly revived Knitting Factory Records. The well-timed deal will result in the reissue of Kuti's complete catalog -- 45 albums -- during the next 12 years.
 
"The industry always talks about who the next big legacy artist will be," says Ian Wheeler, label manager of Knitting Factory Records. "It should have been Fela years ago. We're really trying to bring a new audience around the world, and particularly in the U.S., to his music."
 
Up first is the October 27 release The Best of the Black President, a compilation of Kuti's best-known material. The set is being sold at previews of Fela! and at Felabrations, a series of Afrobeat DJ parties organized by Knitting Factory Records and its marketing partner, Giant Step.
 
"We're a conduit for raising awareness of Afrobeat," says DJ Rich Medina, who founded the Kuti tribute party Jump N' Funk in 2001 and headlined four of 18 Felabrations nationwide. "It's a way of helping the cause."
 
"The first thing we're doing is galvanizing the core base of Fela fans," Giant Step founder/CEO Maurice Bernstein says, "then using the messaging to make him relevant in a universal way. You can live in Detroit and understand what [the famous Kuti saying] 'Music is the weapon' means, just like you would Bob Marley's 'One Love' or Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On?' "
 
The first batch of reissues, to be distributed by Sony RED, arrive February 2, 2010: The '69 Los Angeles Sessions, Live With Ginger Baker, London Scene/Shakara, Rodoforofo Fight, Open & Close/Afrodisiac and Gentleman/Confusion. It's not only the first time Kuti's early London recordings with Koola Loobitos will be reissued but also the debut of his catalog on vinyl, which Knitting Factory hopes will attract a new generation of music collectors who listen to African-influenced bands like Vampire Weekend.
 
"Every day there are traces of new people discovering Fela's music," Wheeler says. "But there has never been a swell of activity around him like this."