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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Youssou N’Dour on stage & screen, PoKempner photos

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner‘s images from the Chicago Jazz Fest, as featured in my previous post, and these from Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour’s rousing who two weeks earlier, exhibit how he’s dealing straightforwardly and creatively with the screen backing musicians at the Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park. Giving us eyefuls to enjoy.

Here’s what we can see — as PoKempner proves, without post-production; the double images are the videographers’ superimpositions — when visually-conscious, kinetic performing artists are video’d and magnified in near-real time, presumably so audiences far from the stage can better appreciate their costumes, moves, expressions and expression.

Dazzling effects, new visions when those moments are captured in the snap of a photograph, too.

The colors and rhythms of these image seem related, naturally, to those of the elegant, graceful, melliflous singer-composer-bandleader-politician’s lastest album, Africa Rekk.

His songs on it include “Goree” (for the island off Dakar from which slaves embarked to the Americas), “Be Careful,” “Exodus,” “Conquer the World,” “Food for All” and “Money, Money.” One can discern his messages simply from the way Youssou N’Dour and troupe looks, dancing, playing, singing. PoKempner’s photojournalism takes us there.

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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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