Night Time is the Right Time
Claude McKay, Os Mutantes, Shalamar, Burna Boy, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Greg Grandin
Welcome back to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. I’ve been thinking a lot these days about a pretty obvious fact: that it’s impossible to try to learn a new language without also, along the way, gaining an education in music, cinema, and various social histories. I’m doing my best on all these paths, moving clunkily. The other day, speaking my pidgin Portuguese, trying to offer my baby coconut water (água de côco), I ended up asking if she wanted a glass of the cold stuff with a spritz of shit (água de cocô). I listen to Os Mutantes because I think they are good, and because I recently heard them on the soundtrack to the very good Brazilian film “Ainda Estou Aqui” (I’m Still Here), but also because my linguistic aspirations demand that I do.
I am pretty bummed out about the death of the actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who famously played Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” Maybe some of you are too. I wrote a short piece about him that will appear on The New Yorker’s website over the weekend. One of the glories of that show is that it, too, used art (paintings, tap dance, jazz) almost verbally, as a form of transmission. Some of that is swirling in this new playlist too. So, towards the end, is Warner’s voice.
Oh, and I should say: if a song here sparks a thought, or another song, or really anything else: leave a comment! If good stuff comes up, perhaps I’ll respond in a future edition.
Until then, Storm On:
“Las Casas denounced but couldn’t make sense of the creation of a slave system that provided food and wealth to the Spanish but also eliminated the labor needed to produce food and wealth. ‘Gold unlike fruit,’ wrote Las Casas with the dark sarcasm that runs through his prose, ‘lies underground and does not grow on trees, and therefore is not easily picked.’ Indians had to dig for it. And the Spanish forced them to dig until they died, faster than the priests could bury them.”
—Greg Grandin, America, América