The anthology Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer edited by Anthony DeCurtis and published by Scribner is now out in paperback. In honor of the paperback, Robert Palmer’s daughter Augusta Palmer and partner Chris Arnold made the Youtube video below about the book , which features a great interview with Mr. DeCurtis.

Related post: The Hand of Fatima DVD release (a personal documentary film about music critic Robert Palmer and his musical family).

Text by Anika Lani

Video interviews by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

In Vodou Brooklyn, Five Ceremonies with Marie Carmel, photographer Stephanie Keith captures the frenetic and sometimes severe essence of what Haitians practicing Vodou call the lwa or spirits.  Each lwa represents a tunnel of darkness alight with an internal divine/human adventure of the unknown.  Stephanie Keith earned a Master’s degree in photography from New York University and a certificate in Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography.  While embossing her professional career with photos and articles published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and the Christian Science Monitor, she was called to explore local themes of religious adherence and popular culture.Three years ago she was invited to a party in a Brooklyn basement. Ms. Keith’s first attendance to a Haitian ceremony was no ordinary jam, but one replete with and women and men proffering themselves, beaming hubris peacock-style, as potential mates.  Ms. Keith entered an uncharted dimension and became a puzzle piece to a larger specific ritual of drumming from an ethereal reservoir of elements that descend into experienced human forms. The spirits are sought for their cosmic powers as political and social stars of improvement and placation in Haitian life.

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On Friday, November 12th 2010 James Hamilton opened his first exhibition of B & W photographs of music world luminaries at KS Art in Tribeca, in conjunction with the launching of his monograph published by Peace Library. The book was edited by musician Thurston Moore, and the exhibition was curated by Elisabeth Biondi, editor of images at The New Yorker.

This book combines the eye of a fine-art photographer with the passion of a true music fan.

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Text by Tanja Laden

Based on a 2001 symposium at the Getty Research Institute, Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular surveys the artist’s influence on American film, music, and the visual arts.

Featuring color reproductions of Smith’s images, as well as essays by scholars, friends, and colleagues, the book explores the life of the 20th-century Renaissance man best known for his definitive Anthology of American Folk Music — a six-record compilation of commercial songs from 1926-1932 that helped facilitate the folk revival of the ’60s. The multifaceted mystic also achieved cult-hero status in the world of cinema for his experimental films, and received critical praise for his rare, freeform abstract paintings.

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Underground comix icon Robert Crumb paints the Bible in a new light with his illustrated version of the entire book of Genesis.

Sex, scandal, and subtle satire abound, but with each carefully rendered detail — and the inclusion of every word from the five opening chapters — Crumb has given a new frame to one of the most widely known stories in history. Sure, he’s been under fire since the book’s release, but when has Crumb not been under fire for something or other?

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