What is rock and roll? Asked and answered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors

Two fantabulous singers: Nona Hendryx (above)
and Corey Glover (below)
All photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Clearly, that's a question best suited to a multiple choice quiz where the correct answer is "All of the above." And, most of all, it is Black. Race music--from blues to gospel and beyond--is the mother source of rock and roll. Or, to put it another way, as writer Carl Hancock Rux did, rock "is one big family with a whole lotta children running around, and some of them don't know who their daddy is."

To Toshi Reagon (music director of Deep Roots of Rock and Roll), the Black Rock Coalition and all of the artists involved in yesterday afternoon's sensational Lincoln Center Out of Doors show, I will quote Rux quoting gospel singer Sallie Martin (1895-1988) in his narration: "Sing what you need to sing. Just keep singing it 'til it takes you where you need to go."

We all want to go there with you!

Here are a few of my photos from the day. Click for more.

Above: Toshi Reagon
Below: Nona Hendryx
among numerous musical artists performing at Lincoln Center Out of Doors
in Deep Roots of Rock and Roll
All photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Above: a dance by Adaku Utah
Below: Narrator Carl Hancock Rux
taking us deep into Black American music history
All photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Lincoln Center Out of Doors continues through August 10. Click here for schedule of these free events.

Kyle Abraham in a luminous film by Gabri Christa

Dance artist and filmmaker Gabri Christa wrote me this note about 2013 MacArthur Award winner, Kyle Abraham:

When I saw Kyle dance (in 2007), I was immediately smitten--and also because he looks like my family. Yes, I wanted to make a film with my dad, and Kyle looks so much like my dad when he was younger, it was a no-brainer. So we lived together and worked together in my home town, and he is also a wonderful person who deserves all the love he is getting. So here they are: my dad Marcel Stomp and my lil bro Kyle.

From TenduTV's Essential Dance Film collection on YouTube: 

An older man looks at his younger self (Kyle Abraham) explore an old quarantine building for enslaved Africans. Quarantine is the first film in Gabri Christa's Another Building series, which features short narrative dance films that take place in and around historic buildings and sites connected to the Dutch History.

The quarantine building was in Curaçao and housed slaves who were too sick to be taken to the Americas. 

For more information on the Another Building series, click here.