Review: Federal Jazz Project

The border between San Diego and Tijuana saw a different kind of xenophobic fear in in the early 1940's than what we're currently used to here in America.  Back then, according to Culture Clash alumus Richard Montoya and New Latin Jazz Quintet band leader Gilbert Castellanos' new stage show, Federal Jazz Project, the color of your skin seemed to matter much less than the color of your party affiliation.

Federal Jazz Project April 6 - May 5 at the San Diego REP

And with one of the original founders of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, having lived in exile for years, preaching the gospel of the workers to the Chicanos around him before his assassination, the mix of poverty, ambition, and the Red Scare are a powerful combination that serves as the dramatic engine for this fantastic period play that is, officially, about a pair of talented sisters named after the two border towns.

But a closer look reveals that the heart and soul of the story is The Kidd, played by my good friend, Joe Hernandez-Kolski.

A cursory glance would have you believe that The Kidd is, at first, just an bright-smiling overeager promoter for the two Mexican sisters.  He's a character you would expect you could easily dismiss as just a plot device to showcase the amazing singing and tap dancing talents of Claudia Gomez and Lorraine Castellanos.

But as the story deepens, and the Second World War begins, the global fight against totalitarianism finds its way into the jazz club at the center of the show and smacks The Kidd's hopes and dreams right in the face.

As beautiful as the music and hilarious as Richard's own comic cameos are throughout the show, The Kidd's story helps unpack both the not-quite-unspoken Black and Brown racism of the time as well as the profoundly damaging legacy that political and racial climate has on some modern Mexican American children to this day.  And just as the sisters San Diego and Tijuana dazzled with their performances, The Kidd's raw emotional power is both a pleasure and a revelation.

Here's a bit from Joe himself about his relationship with Richard and how he came to be involved with this project.

"Federal Jazz Project" - A word from Joe to my Friends

Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the show, but, between the music, the dance, the drama, and the history, I was more than pleasantly surprised by how full and satisfying a meal Federal Jazz Project is.  This is their final weekend in the San Diego Repertory Theater, so I highly recommend anyone make the trip to the Gaslamp District and celebrate your Cinco de Mayo with this excellent show.  You won't be disappointed.

Go See "Red Tails", the Tuskegee Airmen movie, next Friday, 1/20

First of all, let's start with the movie itself.  Here's the trailer for "Red Tails", George Lucas' big budget action movie about the Tuskegee Airmen.



Looks pretty awesome, right?  Action, history, social drama, good clean fun.

Also looks pretty expensive, too.

And to that point: here's an interview George Lucas did with The Daily Show where he broke down in really stark terms how no one in Hollywood wanted to finance this movie because it has all Black actors in the lead roles.


So, you all have heard me railing against the evils of Tyler Perry movies for a long time.  But, as the Emperor of Star Wars points out, the studios are happy to make more Medea movies because they're dirt cheap, so they can always turn a nice little profit from the niche audience of people who like to watch 6 ft. tall Black men disgrace themselves, our mothers, and our grandmothers all in one single performance.

But the Tuskegee Airmen are real heroes: men who risked their lives to save the lives of others.  Literally.  Black men who stood up to be counted.  Americans who embodied the very best of all of us.

Real role models.

And the movie looks like it will be very, very good.

I'm tired of only seeing Black actors in movies that are either about crime or relationship drama.  We have SO many more stories to tell.

Why do you think I love "Event Horizon" so much?  :-)

I feel like I see these sorts of pleas all the time, but this one is pretty serious, because if this movie, from one of the few untouchable filmmakers in the world, bombs, it's going to be extremely hard to get some more diversity in Black cinema.

In short, get all of your friends, and all of your friends' friends, and go out on opening night next Friday, January 20th, and actually BUY A TICKET for "Red Tails".

This one is important, folks.

Ground Zero

I'd been going back through my old, unfinished drafts here on Macroscope when I came across this old article I'd saved from The Atlantic. It's a letter from a woman who was in Hiroshima on the only day that most of us in the rest of the world know anything about Hiroshima, and how, as Wayne Gale would put it, she lived to tell the tale.

Choice quote:

I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel.

This, my friends, is pure, unadulterated horror.

But worth a read when we consider the modern state of nuclear proliferation.

The Atlantic | August 1980 | 'I Thought My Last Hour Had Come...' | Guillain

Bulletproof Flag
First, kudos go to my good friend "Pocho Joe" Hernandez-Kolski, from "The Bomb-itty of Errors" for bringing this to my attention. Here's a rare op-ed piece from Kenneth Turan, film critic for the L.A. Times, where he contends that American movies have convinced us that America cannot be defeated in warfare, in much the same way that German films of the 1930's convinced the citizens of that country of their own invincibility. Heavy stuff.

Art + Politics = Power
This is the very basic website for a very complex movie called "Max". The "Max" in question, played by John Cusack, is an art dealer & teacher in Munich in 1918, and one of his struggling, neurotic, starving, unloved students is a man named Adolph Hitler. Needless to say, alot of people have ALOT to say about this movie, some of it more silly than others. The notion that Hitler could have been anything other than a mortal man, albeit a dangerously disturbed and charismatic one, is childish almost to the point of being laughable. And it also makes it frighteningly easy to dismiss what he did to Germany as some kind of supernatural aberration as opposed to what it really was: something all too easy to repeat. Watch this film and be wary, gentle citizen.