Art

In Colorizing the Characters in ‘Hamilton,’ Playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda Whitewashes History

But he should also make sure we all know Hamilton was no hip-hop hero, just another founding slave holder. Miranda’s color change doesn’t change history, nor make it less distasteful.

Published

4 years ago

June 17, 2021

Isabelle Price

Photo of Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton courtesy of cinemablend

Is there any doubt that Ishmael Reed is Oakland’s writer of conscience and consequence?

He was my teacher in graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. From him I learned a number of truisms about writing. Like, for me, when in doubt, put in the Filipinos. Don’t take them out! Another one was career advice. The more money you make, the less you get to say. Conversely, the less you make, the more you get to say. And that brings me to the topic of this column.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “In the Heights,” opened the movie version of the musical last week. It’s a gushing hydrant of diversity. It should make a lot of money. But when I talked to him a few weeks back I wanted to talk about his other monster hit, “Hamilton,” where Miranda applied what I call a little affirmative action. He put the Black and the Brown actors in the white parts.

The Founding Fathers got “Hamiltoned.” Revolutionary?

“Well, it’s interesting,” he said. “The idea when I picked up the book was it’s an R&B hip-hop musical so, of course, Black and Brown actors would play those roles. As I’m reading the book the first time, I’m picturing which of my favorite hip-hop artists should play Hercules Mulligan or George Washington. They were always people of color, and the music reflects that…I was sort of more surprised that everyone was surprised when we finally came out.”

“I think it kicks open the door,” he added. “Why are we so literal when it comes to this stuff? And you know, I see Shakespeare with people of every ethnicity playing the roles. Why can’t that be the case with our founders? We know what they look like – they’re on our f***ing money. So, like, let’s move forward here. But I think once you see a show that has had the diversity that we have on stage, it’s very hard to go back to sort of these all-white productions because you’ve got to ask why, what stories aren’t we getting when you see that?”

You still have to ask what you’re getting. Miranda got comfortable enough to cuss and didn’t like the term “affirmative action.” But was he rehabbing Hamilton, making him and the others better than they were by applying the hip-hop beat?

It was the perfect opening to ask a question about Reed, the MacArthur ‘genius’ award-winning novelist, satirist, and playwright who last year wrote “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda,” a play that takes Miranda to task for the failure to highlight the real history of Hamilton.

Hamilton and his in-laws, the Schuyler family, were slave owners.

Miranda may have given the actors some tone, but the historical soul remains the same. Just obscured. Reed sees Miranda as duped by the Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow, which Miranda used as the main source for his skin-deep musical that glosses over our racist founders.

“I think seducing thousands of children and even the inaugural poet Amanda Gorman into believing that Hamilton and the Schuyler girls were ‘ardent abolitionists,’ must rank as a cultural crime,” Reed said to me.

As I asked Miranda my question about Reed, the PR rep cuts in: “We are actually out of time.”

Then Miranda says, “I got a long schedule, sorry. Thank you.”

It would have been interesting to hear his answer, with “Hamilton” beginning a new tour in August.

But this is megabuck showbiz, and the PR juggernaut must go on.

So, Miranda wiggled his way out. He could have answered. I gave him a shot.

Then again, Miranda’s got this new property to sell that’s a lot more cleansing and joyful. “In the Heights” is the feel-good movie of the post-pandemic, you know. All the fire hydrants are gushing.

But he should also make sure we all know Hamilton was no hip-hop hero, just another founding slave holder. Miranda’s color change doesn’t change history, nor make it less distasteful.

In fact, the 2021 tour for “Hamilton” is coming to San Francisco, Sacramento and San Jose for multiple-week runs in August through October.

Will he come clean by then? Or come up with a new song? In the meantime, you should read Reed’s “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.” There’s no music to wash away the truth.

Emil Guillermo is a veteran Bay Area journalist and commentator. He vlogs at www.amok.com Twitter @emilamok

Isabelle Price

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Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

2 months ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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A Prolific Painter: Artist and Advocate Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones was a prominent African American artist whose career spanned more than seven decades, from the Harlem Renaissance to the modern art movement. She was not only a prolific painter but also an influential educator, bridging cultural gaps and challenging stereotypes through her vibrant and diverse works.

Published

2 months ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Courtesy of National Archives, Washington, D.C.

By Tamara Shiloh

Her unique journey of self-expression, dedication to art, and advocacy for African American and African themes made her a crucial figure in the evolution of American art.

Jones was born on Nov. 3, 1905, in Boston. Raised in an intellectual and supportive family, she demonstrated an early interest in art, encouraged by her mother, who believed in the importance of creativity. Lois studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she faced racial challenges but persisted in pursuing her passion.

Her pursuit of higher education led her to the prestigious Design Art School, where she perfected her skills in textile design. Later, Jones attended Harvard University and received further training at the Académie Julian in Paris. This European experience greatly influenced her style and broadened her perspective on art.

Jones’s career began in textile design, creating works that were used by leading textile companies. However, her true passion was painting. During the Harlem Renaissance, she moved away from textile design to focus on fine art, exploring themes that reflected her heritage and the African diaspora.

Her early works were influenced by European Post-Impressionism, featuring landscapes and still life, but Jones’s style evolved over time. After spending time in Haiti, she was deeply inspired by Caribbean culture, and her palette became more vivid, her subject matter more symbolic. The influence of African and Caribbean culture is evident in her later works, where she used bright colors and geometric patterns to convey the spirit and stories of the people she encountered.

Her contributions to African American art were significant during a time when Black artists struggled for recognition. She often focused on themes of African heritage, pride, and unity, blending African illustrations and portraits with Western artistic techniques to create a unique visual language that celebrated Black culture.

She was also a dedicated educator. She began her teaching career at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina and later became a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she taught for almost 50 years. Through her teaching, she influenced generations of young Black artists, encouraging them to explore and express their cultural heritage through art.

In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked to exhibit her work alongside other Black artists, helping to create a platform for voices that had long been excluded from mainstream galleries.

Recognition and Legacy

Jones achieved significant recognition throughout her lifetime, both in the United States and internationally. She exhibited her work across the globe, including in Paris, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Jones continued painting until her death in 1998, leaving behind a rich legacy of artistic achievements and contributions to art education. She broke boundaries by celebrating Black identity and heritage at a time when these themes were often marginalized.

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Art

At Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening, Music Director Kedrick Armstrong Will Make History

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.

Published

2 months ago

October 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong. Photo by Scott Chernis.

By Oakland Post Staff

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.

Armstrong, 30, is not a new face to Oakland as he has been an active partner with the Oakland Symphony over the last few years both on and off-the-stage.

From 2022-24, Armstrong led three Oakland Symphony programs and guest-conducted the orchestra, showcasing his broad knowledge of the classical repertoire and enthusiasm for spotlighting diverse voices.

On his Oakland Symphony subscription debut on Feb. 16, Kedrick led the World Premiere of “Here I Stand: Paul Robeson,” an oratorio by Carlos Simon on a libretto by Dan Harder, commissioned by the Oakland Symphony.

On April 16, 2023, Armstrong conducted the Oakland Symphony’s Family Hype concert, presented in partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Bay Area. Armstrong first led the orchestra for a free “Summerstage at City Hall” concert at Oakland City Hall on Aug. 4, 2022.

The music program “Kedrick Armstrong Inaugural Inextinguishable Oakland!” will include commissioned works from master drummer Allison Miller and Bay Area artists – Ethiopian artist Meklit and Latin percussionist John Santos – in celebration of Living Jazz’s 40th anniversary.

Oct. 18 musical program:

Julia Perry: A Short Piece for Orchestra

Celebrate the 40-Year Anniversary of Living Jazz with three jazz-rooted compositions.

“Valley of the Giants” (for Eddie Marshall); Allison Miller, composer; arranged and orchestrated by Todd Sickafoose. Featured artist: Allison Miller, Drum Set; guest artist: Dayna Stephens, Saxophone.

Medley: “Ethio Blue, My Gold, Stars in a Wide Field”

Songs and Lyrics by Meklit; arrangement and orchestration by Sam Bevan. Featured artist: Meklit, Vocals; guest artists: Sam Bevan, Bass, Colin Douglas, Drumkit, Marco Peris Coppola, Tupan/Percussion.

“Un Levantamiento (An Uprising)”

Composer, percussion: John Santos; arrangers: Saul Sierra and John Santos. Featured artist: John Santos, güícharo, bongo; guest artists: Pedro Pastrana, Puerto Rican cuatro; Maria Cora, spoken word.

Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable”

Pre-concert talk by John Kendall Bailey begins at 7:05pm.

For tickets, go to: https://oaklandsymphony.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SUu0000001rYXMAY