"As DJs dig for forgotten recordings, music writers search for stories of forgotten artists. And sometimes even the artists themselves forget about the songs they once wrote and the recordings they once made. Such was the case with the Cuban jazz pianist Hilario Dúran …" Cuban Beat & Fantasía:

This happened 11 days after Kent State.

Gift link. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Washington Square South right now

2) As the years progressed and I learned more history, it was impossible for me not to associate this Act as a reaction to the greater freedoms and potential to make livings some women at least had, in the post Civil War era, due to taking the place of men in the work place due to death and injury.

Fascinating thread

if you’re cis and you’re shocked by that “401,000 trans people have told hostile territory in their own country in the past 18 months” graphic above ⬆️ , the next thing you should do is *actually read* the article linked below ⬇️ .

Held over for a fifth week! (I composed the score.) filmforum.org/film/no-picnic

Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

It’s time. Meet in Selma. Saturday, May 16th. blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction/

Queen Kirnisha Watson of the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club and her court coming out for their Mother’s Day parade. Check out those briefcases!

Black people are giving it these Confederates raw and uncut. This is how it’s gonna be now. You wonder what we’re thinking? It’s this. I believe this is activist Gary Chambers again in Louisiana.

Rep. @brotherjones.bsky.social burns a confederate flag in the rotunda after the House passed 9-0 maps stripping Memphis of representation… #Memphis #JimCrow @MarshaBlackburn @GovBillLee

I'm literally writing about a set of Tennessee segregationists in the 1960s at the moment. I swear to God, they were not *this* comically and overtly racist.

Again this should inspire wall-to-wall media coverage for months. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement is dead. Black people just lost all of their remaining political power in the South. This is a monumental moment in American history that simply isn't being treated as such.

Systemic Racism circa 2026 Example 1:

Seething hatred

The abrupt shutdown of Spirit Airlines over the weekend has turned an entire terminal at LaGuardia Airport into a ghost town: gothamist.visitlink.me/JYRREy

A brilliant & powerful piece:

The Battle of Puebla took place on the 5th of May in 1862, and nowadays Mexico commemorates the - unexpected - triumph of the Mexican army, commanded by General Ignacio Zaragoza, over the troops of the Second French Empire, one of the most powerful of the 19th century, led by Charles Latrille.

I don’t know shit about Star Wars, but they should let David Simon direct a Star Wars series that’s basically Treme and people just hang out, talk about conspiracy theories about the empire, cook in some spaceport kitchen, have cool second line jams etc etc.

Your occasional reminder not to sleep on Newness Cuba: open.spotify.com/playlist/1gP... which every week rotates in 10 fresh Cuban tracks to the 50 on the playlist, all genres eligible. This, for example, is pretty great: open.spotify.com/track/5p18Ch...

Washington Square Park, May 1st, today.

“It is strange how we Cubans have normalised our extreme living conditions, have learned to adapt to chaos, as if societal collapse were just a part of our daily routine.”

Long live the first of May

UK stole 25m years of life and labour through slavery in Barbados, says report www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

This is not about redrawing the maps. It's about creating such a mess that the elections cannot happen. This just took place in Louisiana. The state republicans just stopped the midterms there because of a redistricting dispute. Ballots had already been sent out.

Multiracial democracy in the American South has briefly existed twice in American history, both times enforced from outside, and both times has lapsed the instant the rest of the country lost interest.

Jim Crow was in my dad's lifetime. Mass incarceration and the drug war continue in mine. The Interstate highway system and urban renewal destroyed -- and continues to destroy -- billions in heritable black wealth. And that's just the most prominent, state-endorsed, institutionalized stuff.

We must understand that the Voting Rights Act was not merely about ensuring Black Americans rights, it was about democratizing America. This ruling is not just a decimation of Black rights and Black Americans’ ability to have representation, it is a fatal blow to multiracial democracy.

This is horrifying. New report finds Cuba's infant mortality rate increased 148% from 2018 to 2025, and the likely reason is the significant expansion of US sanctions.

😮

Imagine the delusion or denial required to propose that — as they’re building triumphal arches, waging wars of choice to defend Western civilization, and looksmaxing to approximate Greek statuary — it’s somehow pathetically “radical” to acknowledge the inherent politics of classics as a field

😢

"when Cubans talk about wanting freedom, they’re not really thinking about who specifically governs them. They’re thinking about survival." www.texasobserver.org/cuba-oil-blo...

New García Lorca poem drops. www.diariolibre.com/revista/cult...

There is more charm and joy in these two guys showing up to read a book than in all the years of that other guy’s miserable tenure.

The Supreme Court is fundamentally corrupt & after the NYT reporting there's a big opening for Democrats to make a huge stink about the shadow docket and that it was born to stop the first Black POTUS's climate agenda. We must talk about how the shadow docket has become a racially weaponized tool.

One of the best free offerings in NYC is Lincoln Center's Summer in the City programming. They released their 2026 lineup this week. Those of you with small people might be particularly interested in the child-friendly programs. lincolncenter.org/series/summe...

The Pope is visiting Angola, where 45% of all slave ships departed Africa during the era of the slave trade. Most of the last voyages in the history of the slave trade - 1850s and 1860s - began in U.S. ports and sailed to Angola for captives. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/w...

Unbelievable corruption right in front of our faces.

Like what the fuck does this even mean

@melvingibbs.bsky.social right now at Public Records, Bklyn, performing “Geechee Reclamation.”

Po’ boys near me

<Narrator>: “Music is central to New Orleans’s brand.”