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Thari Teen Disappears into Indian Prison System, Express Tribune, July 24, 2011. THARPARKAR: On May 17, 2006, Pehlaj was a loving but moody 13-year-old, attending school and nursing Bollywood ambitions in his tiny hometown of Diplo. That evening, he quarrelled with his parents and stormed out of the house. At the time, neither his father Jummu nor his mother Mula realised that it might be the last time they ever saw their son.
Aunty Disco Project Bows Out, Express Tribune, June 28, 2011. KARACHI: ADP is the stuff of Karachi legend: 90s alternative hooks, complicated rhythmic shifts, borrowings from genres as vast as samba, disco and garage, stellar musicianship and genuine tragedy. Established in 2006, the band reached critical mass when “Sultanat”, a raucous, anti-government rock anthem, replete with eastern rifts and psychedelic delivery, showcased on “Coke Studio” in 2010. Sped up at Saturday’s Pakistan American Cultural Center show, the song manhandled the crowd, nearly spilling the percussion kit onto the tweensters in the front row. Because at the final ADP show, it was really about the kids.
Colors of the Kalash, Express Tribune, June 26, 2011. CHITRAL: My journey officially begins at the Chitral police station, where Pakistani friends sip sweet green tea while Shane and I try to argue our way out of 24-hour armed escorts.
Castles on Top of Dung Heaps, Express Tribune, June 17, 2011. KARACHI: “We think we’re going to build castles on top of dung heaps? Karachi is a katchi-abadi city, a city of squatters, slums,” said Roland deSouza, an engineer and speaker at a seminar by the urban activist group SHEHRI-CBE.
Levi’s Music Release, Express Tribune, June 1, 2011. KARACHI: Following the corporate/artist sponsorship model that has proven effective with Coke Studio, on May 30 Levi’s Pakistan debuted Zoe Viccaji’s acapella interpretation of the Strings hit, “Bichara Yaar”, on CityFM’s Breakfast Show. “Levi’s Originals: Inspire’ is about how Strings are the originals and Zoe and Bilal are inspired by the originals,” said Adnan Malik, creator and executive producer of the campaign. “Levi’s wanted a twist on a photoshoot with Strings, but I thought they should give the stars of tomorrow a platform. The mainstream artists have done so many campaigns already, why do we want to keep seeing the same people?”
Acting Out with the Living Newspaper, Express Tribune, May 22, 2011. KARACHI: On a balmy Tuesday, 20 third-year Szabist film students cluster in a small, dingy studio. The midday sun streams from the skylight, testing everyone’s patience as they attempt to mark scenes in a series of fact-based plays highlighting human rights violations in Pakistan. Under Dr Framji Minwalla, Head of Media Science at Szabist University, these students and 50 of their peers researched, wrote and are currently staging a specific type of play — The Living Newspaper.
Mukhtaran Mai Case: why did this happen, cry outraged members of society, Express Tribune, April 24, 2011. KARACHI: Three days after the Supreme Court upheld the Lahore High Court’s verdict and released five defendants and commuted a sixth defendant’s death penalty to a life sentence in the Mukhtaran Mai rape case, the Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace organized a protest in front of the Karachi Press Club. “We don’t think rapists should be free,” said Shameem Noorani, a member. “Mukhtaran has to live in that village. It’s unfair and it’s dangerous for her. Crimes against women are increasing, and this sets a bad precedent. Women will feel more stigmatized, they will report crimes even less often.”
Tertiary Healthcare: a brand new casualty, Express Tribune, April 22, 2011. KARACHI: The federally-funded Accident and Emergency department at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre sees about 1,000 patients a day. And that’s on a day when there have been no bomb blasts, no natural disasters and minimal political violence. Most of those patients are admitted into a holding area where they receive basic aid while awaiting surgery or other assignments. The activity in this huge reception room is overwhelming. Stretchers are wheeled in and out, young doctors cluster in small groups, their bright dupattas collectively bent over clipboards, worried families hover nearby. Guards mill about, in one corner technicians peer into a microscope, and near the door rests a body swathed in a sheet.
After the Floods: how one woman’s refusal built a village, Express Tribune, April 21, 2011. KARACHI: The village of Jatti is blessed, at least in some regards. Out of 27 families, nobody drowned in the flood. And now a long lost, nearly native son, Martin Van Camp, has come from Belgium, checkbook in hand, to build them permanent house–houses that, unlike their original mud and wood structures, will withstand the raging waters, should they come again.
For Arts Sake, Express Tribune, April 14, 2011. KARACHI: Roughly a dozen dancers cluster in body beats studio, dressed in everything from sweatpants to shalwar kameez. Some were barefoot, some were in sneakers. One man even wore cowboy boots.
Beatles Fans ‘Come Together’ at T2F, Express Tribune, April 11, 2011. KARACHI: Sunday night, T2F was wall to wall Beatles fans. Teenagers in jeans and tees crowded reverently on bright blankets near the performers. Further back, an older cohort–those who were around when John, Ringo, George and Paul were first dubbed the Fab Four–occupied rows of chairs.
Field Day Explores Energy Crop Production, Biomass Magazine, Feb. 22, 2011. SOPERTON: On a January morning in Soperton, Ga., farmers mingled with academics and investors in a large steel-beamed barn, sipping coffee and brainstorming biomass. As they chatted about the search for clean energy, thermometers registered a rare (for south Georgia) 27 degrees, at-the-pump gas prices hovered just under $3 per gallon and deepwater oil drilling lawsuits dotted the headlines. But among those gathered for Repreve Renewable’s first-ever field day, optimism was palpable…
Talking with Jonathan Levine, in 3 parts, Juxtapoz, Feb. 25, 2010. NEW YORK: For those who have closely followed Jonathan LeVine’s D.I.Y. art-meets-street aesthetic, for those who were paying attention fifteen years ago when a 26-year-old kid first started organizing exhibits at New York punk spaces, Saturday’s show is a signifier of what Jonathan describes as “a generational shift.”
2010 at The Whitney, Juxtapoz, March 8, 2010. Dear America, my lover, soldier, friend, parasite and judge, O-Say-Are-We-Doomed? The Bruce High’s contemporary “Desolation Row” offers cultural clichés and modern archetypes as evidence that we are, a narrative of broken ideals and paralyzed optimism.
Hillbilly Rock and Punk Art at L’Keg, Razorcake, November 29, 2009. LOS ANGELES: Next up was Bombon, also from San Pedro—a trio of ladies who rock a true SoCal fusion of surf-garage and Latina pride.
Let the World Listen Right, Jackson Free Press, October 14, 2009. When I learned of Ali Neff’s book on the Clarksdale hip-hop scene, I was relieved that someone had finally decided to talk about something other than the blues. Someone was willing to engage the Delta on contemporary, relevant terms; someone was ready to listen to the young people.
Robin Pecknold is a Patient Man, When You Awake, August 14, 2009. “Songs are just like, what you do after a certain amount of time’s past in your life and stuff has happened to you, you write songs about it…”
50th Newport Folk Festival Goes Punk. When You Awake, August 5, 2009. Fort Adams State Park, which overlooks Newport Harbor, makes for idyllic music fest grounds, and Saturday was sunny but not sweltering, with a little leftover mud from last week’s rain—all the better to nostalgically squish between bare toes at the first (and for me, only) day of the 50th Newport Folk Festival.
Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, The South Wing, May 1, 2009. NEW YORK: The dancers hop the barricades, ignoring the police that try to call them back…There, in the middle of 125th street, they’re dancing for Michael, they’re dancing for his fans, for the ephemeral nature of fame, fortune and corporeality and for the triumph of Michael’s life.
A Filmmaker’s Journey: Lisa Russell, Brooklyn Rail, April 2009. If you’re Russell, if you go to work and realize that, first off, you’ll need to comfort a teenage rape victim, if you’re faced with a girl, who just now through violence, learned the how-come of conception, if it’s your job to convince her that during her abortion, she’s not going to die–if something like this happens often in your typical workday, the notion that the universe bears any kind of divine logic must seem cruel and absurd.
Man Vs. Flesh: The Garden of Last Days, Jackson Free Press, July 30, 2008. At 500-plus pages, it’s America on parade: g-strings and neon, alcohol and testosterone, easy cash, patriotism and dumb sentiment.
A Fighting Chance, Jackson Free Press cover, June 23, 2008. Naked Madonna is all over the dance studio. In one corner, she’s straddling a fish. In another, she’s kneeling in the surf, leaning against a bike, posing with a satellite dish in a So-Cal backyard. Clothed Madonnas are everywhere, too, stumbling in spiked boots, spilling cocktails on black corsets, tossing punked hair and dancing to themselves, with themselves, sultry-moving to a new sound called “Erotica.” It’s the first time for everyone to hear Madonna’s jazzy, house-inspired fifth studio album. People are digging it. Someone got an advance copy, and the release party in New York– the one where the real Madonna is playing Little Bo Peep– has nothing on the illicit festivities going down in Jackson, Miss., on this sticky Autumn night.
Barefoot in the Delta, Jackson Free Press cover. April 2, 2008. Like an omen, Floyd Graham stands in a Coahoma field, backlit against a fiery Delta horizon. Fifty-something, chain-smoker, charismatic and self-admittedly privileged, he recounts the story of this field—one of many his family owns, one of many where, for decades, 20th-century plantation owners exploited African American tenant farmers.
Ballast, Jackson Free Press, February 13, 2008. Ballast opens with requisite beauty. A young boy, James (JimMyron Ross), walks through the fallow, muddy (hopeless) fields of a Delta winter. Suddenly, seemingly filled with a drive to know he is alive and effectual, the boy breaks into a run. He runs headlong into a flock of snow geese, the only significant breech in an overcast, monotone day. As he runs, the birds rise en masse and fly away, and there you have it, unity and escape, the entire movie in 10 seconds.
Tweaking Twiggy, Jackson Free Press cover, Jan. 16, 2008. A week into January, 27-year-old Jason “Twiggy” Lott leans back in his faux-Swedish chair, running his fingers through close-cropped hair and casually tossing one denim-clad leg over the other. In the flawless glow of bright wood and industrial metal, Twiggy is pondering issues as cliched as his place in the world, and as weighty as the coiled potential of 2008.
What’s in a Label?, Jackson Free Press cover, Oct. 17, 2007. It’s a Thursday evening in late August. The AC’s on the fritz, but who cares? Hal & Mal’s Red Room is slammed. Through open doors, overflow—sound and people—puncture the imaginary breeze. Kids fling sweat from unwashed hair, clambering on benches to glimpse the stage.
Stumbling Upon the Blues, Jackson Free Press cover, July 11, 2007. Jody and I struck up a conversation, and he pointed out the Blue Front Cafe, well-known from Bentonia Blues lore. The shack sat unobtrusively between the railroad tracks and a rusted cotton gin. “Come back June 16,” Jody said. “Come back. That’ll be a day.”
