Kandia Crazy Horse x Jimi Hendrix: Native American Heritage Month
Hope yer gettin’ over The Hump well this week, Sisters & Brothers! For those that don’t know: November is #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
Here in New York City, I will be doing lots of actions & activities to honor that. Among them, I am doing a prayerful march through the entirety of Manhattan Island this Saturday with my friends of the Eagle & Condor Community Center (in Queens), from the National Museum of the American Indian @ Bowling Green (the southernmost tip of Manhattan) all the way to Shorakapok (the Indian Caves @ Inwood Hill on the Spuyten Duyvil). The march goes from 10 am until 6pm. I will also be rolling through the Black Farmers Conference in Harlem this weekend.
This month, I will be performing at another benefit for Standing Rock, on November 25 @ 9pm, this time at the City’s premiere venue for hillbilly/old-timey/bluegrass/roots music — the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn. I have been trying to work it out to play at Jalopy for a long time, so happy to finally do so for a great, beautiful cause so near and dear to my Native heart. This will also be the proper debut of my new Native Americana / twang band Cactus Rose. More details TBA!
(Kandia Crazy Horse @ Electric Lady Studios in vintage fringed buckskin jacket, Greenwich Village NYC, by Camara Dia Holloway)
Made my #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth pilgrimage to #ElectricLadyStudios in the Village, honoring #JimiHendrix’ Native #Tsalagi roots. Received some purple & feathered energy from Jimi that I will be unleashing when I perform @ the Standing Rock benefit @ Jalopy – A’ho*
#Jimi Hendrix #AniYunwiya #KandiaCrazyHorse x #CactusRose #Pamunkey #Afrohippies #CherokeeMist #TaharqaAleem #Ibeji #TheAleems #TwinsSevenSeven #NativeAmericana #ICanHearAtlantisFullOfCheer #MniWiconi #ElectricLadies #CosmicAmericanMusic
Chelsea Girls: Kandia Crazy Horse x Carrie Mae Weems x Claudia Lennear in NYC
Here’s a photo shot by one of the Jack Shainman Gallery’s gallerinas from yesterday: visual artist Carrie Mae Weems & (me) sonic artist Kandia Crazy Horse @ their space on W. 20th Street in Chelsea, for the opening of her new exhibits (see description below). Carrie & I used to share workspace way back many moons ago when I attended Hampshire College & she was teaching there. Nice to see how far our respective Creation has come & find now in her a fellow fan of my Afrohippie & bluegrass singer-songwriter heroine/inspiration Claudia Lennear — two vintage yet manipulated images, “Blue Notes,” of Claudia are featured in the show.
Via Jack Shainman Gallery PR: “Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Carrie Mae Weems’ first solo exhibition in New York City since the historic retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2014. Her influential career continues to address the rifts caused by race, class, and gender via imagery and text that is both sharply direct and beautifully poetic. This two-part exhibition highlights her recent investigations into performance, entertainment, and history.
Blue Notes (2014) and An Essay on Equivalents, See… (2011-2015) highlight figures on the periphery, bringing them front and center. The photographic series are paired with the enigmatic video installation Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me (2012), originally commissioned by the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. The work rests on a 19th century optical trick, “Pepper’s ghost,” in which a strategically lit pane of glass reflects people and objects as dematerialized versions on stage. Weems employs this phantasmagoria to examine her own relationship to history and two individuals in particular: the 16th president of the United States and artist/activist Lonnie Graham, her sometime collaborator. Here history becomes theater, a succession of ghostly projections that draw us in to the strange ways in which representation seduces and manipulates, and how some are left out of history altogether, their apparitions left to haunt the expanses of Western culture.
The theme of performance continues with Scenes & Take (2016). Weems dons her black-robed muse persona—recognizable from the now iconic Roaming and Museums series—to stand before empty stage sets, documenting these encounters with vivid color photographs. The contemplative pose of the artist raises issues of who gets to be shown on screen; what do the fictional characters in television, theater, cinema, and visual art say about the cultural climate in which they are created, and how do these representations shift across time?
All the Boys (2016) responds to the recent killings of young African American men and suggests a darker reality of identity construction. Portraits of black men in hooded sweatshirts are matched with text panels. The written descriptions evoke police reports, underscoring how a demographic is all-too-often targeted and presumed guilty by a system plagued with prejudice. […]”
(Shot of “Blue Note – Claudia Lennear” by Kandia Crazy Horse – Originally from an early 1970s Playboy feature on the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter)
Claudia Lennear had famous affairs with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, when she toured with them in 1969 as an Ikette (part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue), & later with David Bowie during his LA burnout/Sigma Sound Soul phase in Philly – the resulting songs “Brown Sugar,” Claudia’s response “Not At All,” & Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul.” I am personally far more interested in her singing with my most beloved Master of Space & Time Leon Russell (as part of the Shelter People) & Claudia Lennear’s attempt to have a bluegrass trio in the early ’70s with her fellow Mad Dogs & Englishmen Tour veteran singers Donna Washburn (once a member of my most beloved/influence Dillard & Clark) & Donna Weiss (later a songwriter of some note; she had songs covered by, among others, another Mad Dogs star & my heroine/influence as a Native Americana artist, Rita Coolidge – I just recently filed an essay about Ms. Coolidge & this lore, which will be published next year in a tome on Women Of Country). A friend & Southern sonic forebear of mine, the late Memphis pianist/producer icon Jim Dickinson (aka James Luther Dickinson of “Dixie-Fried” & “White Horses”+ producing Big Star’s Third fame) promised to give me a photo of their bluegrass trio, as he was tied to the project, but then he walked on. Still hope to see the images someday! Of course, Claudia is active again, post- Twenty Feet From Stardom rediscovery, and leading two bands — one bluegrass — today in Los Angeles & recording an album David Bowie had sought her out to collaborate on before his passing. Looking forward to catching ’em live whenever I next make it to the Coast. I always do enjoy spending time in LA, amongst the newer Laurel Canyon & Topanga Canyon rock ‘n roll hippie glitterati — although most of them are East Side gentrifiers, particularly in Echo Park & Downtown (with satellites in Eagle Rock & Mt. Washington & out in the environs of Joshua Tree & Bolinas & Nevada City); this is why I always keep dear Odetta (who my late Virginian Native American mother Anne Marie wished for me to model & pick guitar in her image) & Claudia Lennear as my history-making twang foremamas & legendary Ladies of the Canyon.
I still plan to do a major project around the sound+vision of Claudia Lennear, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge & their mutual benefactors, Delaney and Bonnie (& their fabulous Friends) during 2017 – Stay tuned!
(Two #BlackRockCoalition & #AfroPunk veteran chroniclers & rock-n-rollers outside Jack Shainman Gallery, Chelsea: #KandiaCrazyHorse #NativeAmericana #CosmicCountry #singersongwriter & #RobFields #BoldAsLove #blogger & festival founder – #FollowMe on #Instagram: @kandiacrazyhorse)
(LADY OF (HUDSON) CANYON: After Carrie’s opening, upon The Highline in Chelsea, by a fan – More NYC shows upcoming! #LadiesOfTheCanyon)
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