This month's books are in two categories: music biographies and Asian-American fiction. Music first.

Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington and Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, both by Terry Teachout

A friend of ours invited us to join a mostly virtual "musicology" book club hosted by a DC Public Library employee on the west side of town. The Ellington book ( Read more... )

DC has an underrated music scene, and one of the many hidden gems was Phil Wiggins, a blues harmonica player. We saw him several times at the Richmond Folk Festival and around DC. He spent 30 years playing with John Cephas, who, according to Wiggins' book Sweet Bitter Blues, was not an easy person to get along with (and who may have cheated Wiggins ( Read more... )

My worst opera may just be recency bias, but the Washington National Opera's production of Blue (music, Jeanine Tesori; libetto, Tazewell Thompson) was pretty bad in nearly every respect. The story, of a black cop's son being killed by a white cop, should have provided plenty of emotion. Instead, the music felt like one of those lead aprons you ( Read more... )

This production reminded me that I really need to bang out that post about terrible operas. I don't remember why I bought tickets to this, because I didn't like Turandot the first time I saw it. Maybe I thought Brent would like it--he's nicer to Puccini than I am.

It was our first time attending an opera on the company's gala night. I was just ( Read more... )

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, Dipo Faloyin

An early contender for best book I've read this year. Faloyin was a writer for Vice, and some of the ideas in this book were first aired on the site. Lots of books are described as hilarious and poignant; this one actually is. Faloyin is from Lagos, and the first two chapters are ( Read more... )

Here are more photos from our trip to Artomatic on Sunday with Twfkat.

These linocuts are by Michelle Casto. A sign on the wall said they were inspired by a mug book of 19th-century criminal mugshots in the National Archives.


( Read more... )

Here are photos from Artomatic, the creative smorgasbord that takes over an empty office building. People pay a nominal fee and volunteer for shifts in exchange for space to display their artworks.

Brent said that this year's building used to house the Urban Institute. There's still a lot of office furniture left:

( Read more... )

Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs, Willie Nelson (with David Ritz)

My local library's ebook selection is surprisingly robust on music books. This is one of them, and one of several books Nelson has written. It uses about 150 of his songs as inspirations for various topics, only some of which are the stories behind the songs. Some ( Read more... )

I need to do some homework before I can pick a worst opera I've ever seen, but I wanted to wait until after we saw Songbird, just in case it was a candidate. I don't think that it is, but it was one of the most confusing shows I've ever seen. I gave myself a headache trying to figure out what was going on musically.

Songbird is an update of a ( Read more... )

I feel that I should note here for the record that I've now lived in the DC about 25 years, which is kind of remarkable even though I don't have much to say about it. I came here with no job and no local contacts; I thought I'd pay off some debts and then go back to graduate school. I did pay off the debts, eventually. [First I racked up even more ( Read more... )