In honor of James Baldwin as more than a legend
Good morning. It is Friday. Today we’re previewing a symposium on writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. We’ll also find out why more than 500 tuba players are expected at Rockefeller Center on Sunday.
Writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin said his mission was to “bear witness to the truth,” and he did so in a way that was passionate, influential and lasting. Baldwin will be the subject of one symposium at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday where writers and artists will talk about his legacy. Here’s a sneak peek from my colleague Melissa Guerrero, who spoke with some of them:
In the 1980s, as a sophomore art history and African American studies student at Smith College, Thelma Golden met a professor who was unlike the others—”truly one of the first living artists that I had the opportunity to have a sustained involvement with have,” she said. She credits her work with that professor in an English seminar as a driving force in her approach to her work as director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
That professor was the writer, activist and son of Harlem itself, James Baldwin.
Golden’s connection to Baldwin will bring her to the symposium at the Brooklyn Museum. The event celebrates the publication of “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin,” featuring essays by writer and critic Hilton Als, filmmaker Barry Jenkins and novelist Jamaica Kincaid, among others.
The symposium, like the book, will honor Baldwin’s legacy by exploring the many facets of his identity and interests. The conversations will cover the politics of gay life, past and present, as they relate to Baldwin, who died in 1987. There will also be discussions about his impact on a group of visual artists, and a performance of “The Gospel of James Baldwin” by singer and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.
Als, who edited “God Made My Face,” said he wanted an event for Baldwin “that celebrates life.” of life.” So what does it look like to set aside the folklore attributed to a cultural figure like Baldwin?
For Stephen Best, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who contributed to the book, this means encouraging people to deepen their understanding of Baldwin. To make his point, he quoted the writer Teju Cole describing a characterization of Baldwin in the age of social media as “the go-to quote factory of the woke.”
“While that’s great and while that might even introduce a whole new generation to him, it’s not just his quotes,” Best said. “He guarantees immersion and comes at him from all different angles.” He said his earliest memory of being involved with Baldwin’s work in the late 1980s was an English seminar called “Baldwin, Baraka and Reed.”
“Of the three characters in that class, he’s the one I still teach regularly,” he said. (The others were Amiri Baraka, who died in 2014, and Ishmael Reed.)
Daphne Brooks, who also contributed to the book and is a professor at Yale University, said she recognized Baldwin’s “symbolic value” before reading any of his work.
“As a child of the post-civil rights era, I grew up with a very vivid kind of recognition of his impact on the long black freedom struggle politics,” she said. For years, her father, a public school administrator and teacher, kept a first edition of Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” on his bedside table.
“Read James Baldwin with others,” she said. “Use his work as a way to forge felt connections, to build community, to imagine what it would be like to work with other people on a daily basis, as if you were in the circle of a Cutting Room jazz ensemble sit.”
Weather
It will be a mainly sunny day with highs around 40 degrees. In the evening it will be partly cloudy, with temperatures around 40 degrees.
ALTERNATE PARKING
Effective today. Suspended tomorrow (Immaculate Conception).
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Michael Salzman was in high school in 1974 when one of his teachers said, “I went to this thing.” You probably would have enjoyed it.”
The “thing” was a noisy spectacle that took place once a year at Rockefeller Center known as Tuba Christmas. Salzman, a tuba player in the school band, went the next year, has gone every year since and is now master of ceremonies. He expects to welcome more than 500 tuba players who will play their way through the Christmas carols on Sunday from 3 p.m.
The performance will be the 50th Tuba Christmas.
Some players will have already dragged their tuba a long way when they play the first note on Sunday. Salzman said he heard from an 82-year-old tuba player in South Dakota who planned to drive to New York for Tuba Christmas. She asked if she could sit down while she played. Salzman said he assured her, “If you can come to New York, we can get you a seat.”
Tuba Christmas is the brainchild of Harvey Phillips, who has been variously described as the Heifetz, the Horowitz or the Segovia of the tuba. He wanted the tuba to be seen as more than the Rodney Dangerfield of instruments; he wanted it to be taken seriously, and he commissioned or inspired more than 200 pieces for it.
Phillips also did what it took to keep composers’ juices flowing. He gave the composer Vincent Persichetti a case of Beefeater gin; Persichetti serenaded solo tuba.
Phillips created Tuba Christmas in memory of William Bell, who at age 19 was the lead tubist in the John Philip Sousa band and later played in the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini and in the New York Philharmonic. Phillips thought the end-of-year holidays would be an appropriate time because Bell was born on Christmas Day.
Phillips “called Rockefeller Center and explained what he wanted to do, to bring in hundreds of tuba players,” Salzman said. “They thought he was crazy. He was immediately rejected. But then he said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll give you the personal numbers of some colleagues. They will vouch for me. ”
Phillips passed on the unlisted numbers of Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski and Andre Kostelanetz.
Salzman said someone from Rockefeller Center quickly called back and told Phillips, “They said we should let you do whatever you want.” It will be great.”
The forecast for Sunday is that there will be occasional rain in the afternoon, but Salzman is undeterred. “We’ve done it in pouring rain, we’ve done it in sleet, we’ve done it in minus 3 degree weather, we’ve done it in 65 degree weather,” he said. “Whatever the weather gods give us, it doesn’t matter. We play Christmas carols.”