INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

  On this day when Black History Month morphs into Women's Herstory Month, I am compelled to mention and praise the new documentary on the life of pianist and actor Hazel Scott titled  The Disappearance of Miss Scott . Hazel Scott was an extremely talented pianist who made her career by "swinging the classics" as it was called back them. Born in 1920 in Trinidad, Hazel and her mother came to New York City at the height of the Harlem Renaissance when she was four years old. Four years later, she was enrolled to study piano at Juilliard. After being heard in several radio broadcasts, she was engaged to star at Café Society after her friend Billie Holiday secured the gig for her. Soon Hollywood came calling and she was cast "as herself" in five films. During the filming of her final film, The Heat's On (1943), Scott demanded that the black women who were dancing in the scene when she was at the piano wear costumes that were more dignified than the ones that the...

The provocative title of my last blog ( Bradley Cooper's " Maestro" : Ho-Hum! Another Movie About White People )   brought lots of comments, re-posts, and controversy. Interestingly, all positive comments came from black people (American and otherwise), and several whites as well. All negative comments came from whites. It was shocking to me how blissfully unaware some of the non-melanated people are when it comes to the history of racism in Hollywood. They have no idea of the degree to which African Americans have been discriminated against, excluded, relegated to servant status, or portrayed as criminals. When a film about Leonard Bernstein completely ignored his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, I could not keep silent. Here are some of the comments: Mark Bailey: "Brilliant review -- I agree with every word. Thanks for posting it. I was deeply bothered by the homophobia and gay-shaming in the film, especially by Felicia. The lack of inclusivity is yet an...

  Granted, most Hollywood films about American celebrities of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are going to be about white people. But in a film about Leonard Bernstein, there were several opportunities to tell the story about Lenny marching with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, or Lenny introducing young André  Watts to the world concert stage, or even Lenny conducting Marian Anderson with the Israel Philharmonic. But no. The producers of Maestro chose to ignore the existence of African Americans, except when Bernstein's wife, Felicia (portrayed by Carey Mulligan), needed a nurse more than an hour and forty-five minutes into the film. At the very end, Bernstein directs his drunken, romantic attention toward a young black male conducting student, whom he had just instructed in a conducting master class. I suppose this young conducting student represented the future of classical music. But for a people who had been so discriminated against after the Second World War that young Ber...

I finally got the chance to sit down and watch the Oscar-winning film Green Book , on the life of African American concert pianist Don Shirley . As I had written in an earlier blog ( "Ebony and Ivory: A Dissonant Truth" ), I had visited with Dr. Shirley in his apartment above Carnegie Hall when my parents were in New York with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The film gave a very accurate depiction of his home and the extravagant, ostentatious décor. The Real Don Shirley in his home Don Shirley was praised early in his life as a genius, a wunderkind whose forte was the traditional classical repertoire. Composer Igor Stravinsky said of him: "His virtuosity is worthy of Gods." But his record label forced him to play jazz, and sent him on tour with a jazz trio. In an interview, Shirley said that his record label wanted him to appear in overalls with a red bandana around his neck on the album cover. He refused. In my own book I have written about facing racism as an African Am...