Category Archives: Music

Malcolm Boyd: Gettin’ Kinda Jazzy!

Malcolm_Boyd-Social_Vagrant[1] White Crane friend, advisorand
all round mensch
Malcolm Boyd, will give a concert reading of his prayer-poems
accompanied by a jazz trio at the
2010 Sausalito
International  Film Festival
on August
14. Musicians appearing with Boyd are guitarist Johnnie Valentino, composer
Scott Page
-Payter on keyboards and percussionist
Marino Bambino.

Boyd's words are combined with musical themes by the late legendary
jazz musician Vince
Guaraldi.
 "The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi," a new film in
which Boyd appears, will be screened at the festival. Over four weeks in 1966 a
remarkable series of performances at the hungry i
nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach captured the imagination of hip
audiences and resonated around the world. Dick Gregory gave the stage to
Guaraldi and Episcopal priest-author Boyd.  Prayers, Beat poetry and jazz
fused.  Though covered by global media the performances were never
recorded.  Very few had an opportunity to experience this happening. Until
now. The prayer-poems are from Boyd's bestselling classic "Are You
Running with Me, Jesus?"

White Crane Books offers two other titles by Boyd Take Off The Masks, his classic spiritual biography and coming out story and A Prophet in His
Own Land: The Malcolm Boyd Reader
,  collected writings
from five decades.

What Would the Theater Be Without Gay Folk?

ArthurLaurentstomhatcher Tony-winning playwright-director Arthur Laurents' (left in picture) and late partner Tom
Hatcher’s (right in picture) foundation has established an annual $150,000 prize. The
Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award will be given for an unproduced, full-length
play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright.

The prize includes a $50,000 cash award for the selected playwright and a
$100,000 grant for production costs of the play's premiere at a nonprofit
theater.

The foundation said Thursday it's the first major award for playwrighting to
be named in honor of a gay couple. The 92-year-old Laurents wrote the books for
"Gypsy" and "West Side Story." Hatcher was Laurents'
partner of 52 years. He was an actor and real estate developer and died in
2006. Submissions from invited applicants will be accepted June 15 to September
15th 2010. The first award recipient will be notified March 15, 2011.

Why Ricky Martin Matters

So a closeted Gay kid growing up in Caracas, Managua or Corpus Christi, Texas, just got another model for living his life openly. That model is Ricky Martin. And unlike the hundreds highlighted by our global media, Martin shares a language and culture with that closeted Gay kid.

RickyMartin Ricky Martin has come out of the closet and a lot of the commentary around the internet and blogosphere mirrored that of Nathan Lane's anti-climactic coming out years ago.  I recall a comedian at that time commenting that Lane's disclosure amounted to "tea leaves" that did not need to be read.  Certainly Lane, already known for playing flamboyantly Gay characters, didn't surprise many.  But we brush these statements aside at our peril: the peril of hardening ourselves to jade.  In Lane's case it was a long path that included a mother who reportedly told him she preferred him dead than gay.  Lane came out when he could and that decision was his to make.  He hurt no one by his timing.  In Martin's case he has said he came out now because he has two kids and didn't want them to live with that kind of duplicity.  On a side note I'm struck at how Martin, like another prominent singer long-rumoured to be Gay, chose to be honest because of his kids.  I'm speaking of the American Idol contestant-singer Clay Aiken's who came out because he didn't want to lie to his children.  It's as if they reached a threshold where the containment units of the closet couldn't hold anymore.  I think we can all relate to that if we're honest.

But what many comments in the English language press (and internet) don't get is how much of a big deal Ricky Martin's coming out is for Latin America and for Latino GLBT people.  I can't think of a popular Latin-American entertainer with Martin's track record to come out of the closet like this.

Now that last statement might hit some people in the United States as funny.

"Prominent?" "Livin' La Vida Loca dude?"  "Menudo guy is 'prominent'?"  "Har Har."

I realize that in the United States' he's basically known for Menudo and Livin La Vida Loca. But consider for a moment that Ricky Martin has sold more than 60 million albums in his career.  Ponder that figure for a minute.  Those are albums.  Not singles.  That's more albums than Christina Aguilera's sold worldwide.  This isn't "Livin' La Vida Loca" one-hit wonder territory.  He's an enormous star in most other parts of the world.  In 1998 Martin was chosen to sing the anthem of the FIFA World Cup. That recording of "The Cup of Life"/"La Copa de la Vida" reached number one on the charts in 60 countries.  I bet you've never heard this song before.  Probably because the United States, not being a soccer-playing country, wasn't among those 60 countries.  But this is all to say that he was a huge star in Latin America and Europe before he appeared in the American consciousness and continues to be for rest of the world.

Some of the response to his coming out reveals the real ignorance on the part of many people in this country about Latino subjects or continents beyond Europe and the Northern half of North America.  And it's this lacuna of understanding by many in this country that reveals to me why his coming out is so important for Gay Latinos in this culture.  It provides one proud out Gay person of color for those of us who are not helped by a monoracial or monocultural understanding of what it means to be gay.  This paltry understanding was brought home for me a few days ago by a comment I read in response to Martin's coming out.  Something to effect that the story made him hear Lucille Ball's voice intone "Riiicky" from the old "I Love Lucy" show.  The "Ricky" in that case was the character of "Ricky Ricardo", played by Desi Arnaz.  Not surprising really because in my experience as a Gay Latino man, I can attest to the fact that for many non-Latino people, gay and straight a like, there are few Latinos in the popular consciousness.  If you're Cuban, your very existence evinces in word-association are to Ricky Ricardo/Desi Arnaz, or the Italian-American Al Pacino's Scarface impression.  It's pretty much the same for other Latino nationalities.  If you're Gay and Latino the circle pretty much shrinks to nothing.

A little side story to make my point:  When I came out of the closet in that far-ago time of the early 1990s, my mother struggled mightily with the announcement.  While she has come a long way and become supportive of me and my partner, at the time it was hard for her to come around to it.  Certainly there was the religious bias and misinformation.  But a big part of it was cultural.  I've written before about the feeling my mother had that my being "Gay" was some weird American thing.  Like a virus I'd picked up here.  I believe the turning point for her was coming to understand what my "being Gay" meant.  Which for her happened when she was able to connect my "being Gay" with the many Cuban intellectual and cultural figures she knew and loved.  People like Ernesto Lecuona and Lezama Lima. 

Looking at the public impressions of out Gay culture at the time my mother could be forgiven for thinking that there were no Gay Latinos in existence.  I can only remember Pedro Zamora, the Latino character on MTV's The Real World who had HIV and became an AIDS educator.  The situation hasn't improved that much in the insuing years.  For someone of Ricky Martin's starpower to come out makes a difference for people trying to ground their understanding of what it means to be Gay in a Latino context.

I also love the fact that Ricky Martin came out of his own accord.  There was no George Michael-like tea-room sting, no spurned lover suing him for support.  Martin chose his own moment to speak his own truth.  He also wrote eloquently about his timing and his decision to be honest.  I'll let his own words speak for themselves:

"Today is my day, this is my time, and this is my moment. These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn't even know existed … I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am,"

"Many people told me: 'Ricky it's not important,' 'it's not worth it,' 'all the years you've worked and everything you've built will collapse,' 'many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature.' Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions,"

Know that these eloquent statements have been translated and read and talked about in Spanish throughout Latin America.  So a closeted Gay kid growing up in Caracas, Managua or Corpus Christi, Texas, just got another model for living his life openly.  That model is Ricky Martin.  And unlike the hundreds highlighted by our global media, Martin shares a language and culture with that closeted Gay kid.  Martin has created music that this closeted kid and his family have danced to for years.  Martin has been a source of pride for Latino people — you don't get the FIFA gig for being some washed up musician.   A lot of Gay Latino people just received a point of pride and identification of sorts.  May he emboldened more people to come out of the closet and live openly.  This is an incredibly important thing that has just happened.

Good for him.

WC81 – Review of Vladimir’s Vladmaster

81_vladmaster
VLADMASTER
By Vladimir
www.vladmaster.com
Reviewed by Bo Young

There aren’t many artists working in the View-Master™ medium, but Vladimir does. As it happens, I visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology last time I was in Los Angeles.  Well worth a trip just for a visit to that magical place. One of the MJT’s more cunning souvenirs is a View-Master™ collection of discs showing four of the exhibits that were there at the time (and may well still be.) So I fortunately happened to have a View-Master™ handy when I discovered Vladmaster. It is possible to buy a View-Master™ at Vladimir’s website, along with other stories she tells in the medium, but when I found the art, the View-Master™ wasn’t offered.

Vladimir, an artist living in Portland Oregon, makes Vladmasters. Vladmasters are handmade View-Master™ reels designed, photographed, and hand-assembled by Vladimir. She makes use of toys, neglected household objects, and odd ephemera to tell 28-picture, 3-D tales of missing earth-moving industrial equipment, disastrous dinner parties, and overly adventurous cockroaches, to name a few.

Vladmaster performances are simultaneous Vladmaster experiences in which every attendee needs a viewer and set of discs and then led through the story by a soundtrack featuring music, narration, sound effects, and ding noises to cue the change from image to image. If you don’t happen to be the lucky person with the lone View-Master™ in the room at your eyes, you can enjoy the accompanying light show that displays on the computer screen. But how fun would it be for everyone in your household to have their own View-Master™?

Bottom line, there is just something charming — a little queer, if you will — about the medium and the message. And isn’t it time someone brought back the View-Master™? Me…I’m a soon-to-be 60-year old, about to move to the wilds of upstate New York, so a View-Master™ seems like just the thing for snowed in winter evening entertainment. And I showed it to my hipster-cool, 20-something nieces and the general comments were in the area of “This guy’s good!” (20-somethings call everyone “guy”).

The Vladmaster I received was The Public Life of Jeremiah Barnes, the above-referenced story of missing heavy earth-moving equipment told in miniature toy medium. Other titles include Franz Kafka Parables, Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities, Lucifugia Thigmotaxis, Actaeon At Home, and Fear & Trembling. Collect them all! Just $20. View-Master™ $5.00 extra + $3.00 shipping. Viewers are ONLY for sale with the purchase of a Vladmaster set. I say: Spring for it.  Visit www.vladmaster.com

Bo Young is White Crane’s publisher.  He lives in Upstate New York.

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