Saturday, July 05, 2003

One Nation Under a Groove by Luc Sante 17 Jul 03 Issue Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music by Arthur Kempton Pantheon, 498 pp., $27.50 The boogaloo is, or was, one of the thousand dances the land was full of in the 1960s, enumerated in inventory songs such as James Brown's 'There Was a Time' and the Isley Brothers' 'Nobody But Me': the skate, the swim, the pony, the monkey, the camelwalk, the shing-a-ling. Arthur Kempton notes that it made its debut as the title of a million-selling but faintly remembered 1965 release by the Chicago duo Tom and Jerrio, a song that launched two major catch phrases of the era, 'sock it to me' and 'let it all hang out.' The boogaloo outlasted many of its competitor dances, or at least its name did, even making the transition into Spanglish as bugalú. Somewhere along the line, perhaps around the time most people forgot its steps, the name metamorphosed into a sweeping term that could encompass almost all of African-American popular music, or at least everything that has arisen since World War II. The names of styles, which embody novelty, date more quickly than the substance they describe. 'Soul' now sounds antique; 'R&B' can be applied to the works of Wynonie Harris in the late 1940s, or to those of Mary J. Blige fifty years later, but not much in between. But because 'boogaloo' is a term transmitted more often orally than in writing, it has enjoyed an immunity to the flux of fashion. [The New York Review of Books] 1:26:07 PM  Google It!

The Nimrud Gold on Display in Baghdad... For a Few Hours by Joanna Mackle 03 Jul 03 BAGHDAD, IRAQ. On Thursday 3 July the Assyrian gallery in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, will be open to the public for a few hours and a small part of the gold treasure found in the tombs of the Assyrian queens at Nimrud will be on display. This treasure was evacuated to a vault of the Baghdad Central Bank for safekeeping during the recent war. The opening of this exhibition has provided the staff of the Iraq museum with an opportunity to tidy up the museum after the widespread damage caused by the thefts and looting which occurred during the war. However, this is only the beginning of what will be a very long process of conservation and reconstruction. A British Museum curator Sarah Collins is now working in the Iraq Museum with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). As part of the international conservation programme the British Museum has invited Iraqi colleagues to London during the summer for training in new techniques and a team of conservators drawing together expertise from around the world will be sent to Baghdad in the autumn. [The Art Newspaper] 11:17:51 AM  Google It!