"But just as residents would not move to Soul City unless there were jobs, companies would not locate in Soul City unless there were skilled workers to run their factories and safe, attractive neighborhoods for their managers to live in."Īnd despite some early, modest successes on those fronts, the project, in the end, couldn't overcome a hostile media, a skittish HUD department, and opposition politicians, including newly elected Sen. The land that he purchased lacked infrastructure, and a billboard nearby proclaimed "You Are in the Heart of Klan Country." But the land was cheap and stocked with natural resources, so he soldiered on with the help of a group of true believers.
AMERICAN UTOPIA REVIEWS FREE
It would be a city where Black people could feel free and safe, although people of all races would be welcome to live there. That simply is what that means."Īfter leaving CORE in 1968, an idea occurred to McKissick: "He was determined to build a new kind of city, one that would avoid the mistakes of the past and serve as a model for the future." A World War II veteran, McKissick had witnessed French city planners rebuild their towns after they'd been shellacked by mortar shells the experience inspired his idea for a new town, Soul City, that he'd build from the ground up in the Piedmont region of his native North Carolina. He minced no words in explaining Black Power to a skeptical Harvard professor: "That means putting power in black people's hands. In 1966, he was elected executive director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), steering the organization to the Black Power movement. As Byrne seems to say, we owe ourselves that much.McKissick had a long career in civil rights before launching his Soul City project, participating in a freedom ride and working as a lawyer fighting segregation. Connect with each other, and with yourself. Hugo Ball and Dadaist ethics, police brutality, the Sony Triniton television that Byrne bought with his first recording contract - they’re all related, and even if they weren’t, it’s his job to make the connections. His monologues never amount to the monotonous good feelings more suited for Ted Talks and Apple product launches.
But he’s also trying, however gently, to push us. It goes without saying that Byrne, a consummate entertainer, also plays a few hits: “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” “Burning Down the House,” “Once in a Lifetime” - he knows what we want to hear. But even that can’t match the power of the group covering Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout,” a powerful protest anthem which, in this updated rendition, climaxes with the entire group shouting Freddie Gray’s name. Seeing the entire crew kneel onstage, backdropped by a photo of Colin Kaepernick, is effecting. It’s a point more interestingly made by the pure spectacle of it all, which wears its influences as comfortably as Byrne’s music ever did.
And in one of the many comfortably talkative monologues he delivers between songs, he says, in that assured but invitingly casual warble of his: “Most of us are immigrants.” The musicians onstage, in keeping with the theme, are from around the world: France, Brazil, Canada. The proceedings here are far less interested in Byrne alone than in the former Talking Heads singer as the emcee of a party to which all of us are invited. But despite being unaffiliated with a band, he’s never come off as a “solo artist” in the literal sense. All of it lends a sense of alive-ness to this live performance. And, of course, there’s the thrill of seeing people standing up in their seats, clapping along, silhouetted against Byrne’s bright, inviting presence onstage. There are close-ups on Byrne’s face, his eyes, even his feet dynamic roving views from onstage and off a keen awareness of the audience. Like the late Jonathan Demme, director of Stop Making Sense, Lee is here not just to document but to heighten.
AMERICAN UTOPIA REVIEWS MOVIE
There’s also director Spike Lee, who, as he did adapting the rock-musical Passing Strange into a movie in 2009, is more than just wingman-ing here. A filmed version of the hit Broadway show that ran from October 2019 to February 2020 (and begins streaming on HBO Max October 17th), it’s a time capsule with a timely end-date for a project that finds unity where many of us might only see difference and disruption. He points to another region on the brain: “Here is a connection with the opposite side.”Ĭonnection - and not only between opposites, but in the manner of a neural network or, to make the obvious but still valuable analogy, a world community - is the guiding element, maybe even artistic theology, of American Utopia. American Utopia begins where David Byrne’s 2018 album of the same name ended: with the song “Here.” “Here is an area of great confusion,” the former Talking Heads singer declares from a steel-gray, uncluttered stage, a model brain aloft in his hand.
0 kommentar(er)
