Breathing Curiosity
Anita Baker, born January 26, 1958, Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A., is the singer whose three-octave range and powerful, emotional delivery brought her international acclaim in the 1980s and ’90s. She was one of the most popular artists in urban contemporary music, a genre that her sophisticated, tradition-oriented soul and rhythm-and-blues singing helped to define. The Aristipposian… Continue reading Anita Baker *I 26 1958 — The Life You Give
Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, on June 7 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., is the singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer on keyboards, drums, and bass who was among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Like Stevie Wonder, he was a rare composer who could perform at a professional level on virtually… Continue reading The Life You Give: Prince *1958
James Brown, born May 3, 1933, Barnwell, South Carolina, U.S.A., is the singer, songwriter, arranger, and dancer, who was one of the most important and influential entertainers in 20th-century popular music and whose remarkable achievements earned him the sobriquet “the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business.”Brown was raised mainly in Augusta, Georgia, by his great-aunt, who… Continue reading The Life You Give: James Brown *1933
Aretha Franklin, born Aretha Louise Franklin, on March 25 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A., is the singer who defined the golden age of soul music of the 1960s.Franklin’s mother, Barbara, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her father, C.L. Franklin, presided over the New Bethel Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, and was a minister of… Continue reading The Life You Give — Aretha Franklin *March 25 1942
Sam Cooke, born Samuel Cook, on January 22 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.A., was singer, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur who was a major figure in the history of popular music and, along with Ray Charles, one of the most influential Black vocalists of the post-World War II period. If Charles represented raw soul, Cooke symbolized… Continue reading The Life You Give: Sam Cooke *1931
Tina Turner, original name Anna Mae Bullock, (born November 26, 1939, Brownsville, Tennessee, U.S.), American-born singer who found success in the rhythm-and-blues, soul, and rock genres in a career that spanned five decades. Turner was born into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. She began singing as a teenager and, after moving to St. Louis,… Continue reading The Life You Give: Tina Turner *1939
if greatness is not physical if being touched is not carnalif love is greater than the bodyif we know beyond knowing, and not nearly near the boundaries of knowledge if we are vibration, independently of an ego driven or destructively shy beingif an embodied soul feels oneness with another why is gender identification?
in the joy of beautiful, gentle, moving tears, if not the body, what is being touched?
Livingston Platt’s costume design for the ballet “The Dance in Place Congo” (1918), by Henry F. Gilbert (1868 – 1928) — Met Archives Ever since we have been traveling this globe, our exposure to the exotic or merely to the other (individual, culture, tradition, belief), has left us impressed, influenced, at least touched. Henry F.… Continue reading The Soul is unbound
Which of them is driving the passion that shakes me repeatedly?
The hunger of gastronomical measure on the flesh is merely a choice on cultural oppression. Yes, it has some repercussions. It stands pale, though, next to the insatiable hunger that will perpetuate in everything we are, far beyond fresh or decaying flesh. Stay hungry! (Talking Heads)
Sila Blume 