Art and Culture

I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.

Toni Morrison is one of the great writers of her generation.  Few writers have the emotional and literary power of Morrison.  Add to that her development of many stories of the African American experience.  She deftly spins tales of great passion, empathy, and love.  Morrison gives readers a particularly intense focus of the tragedy of slavery as well as the aftermath leading up to the present day.  Her numerous novels include The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and God Help the Child.  My particular favorite is Sula.  In honor of her recent passing, I am dedicating this review to Toni Morrison.

Collin Selman is an indie-pop artist from Central Texas. Selman recently was highlighted on Spotify's Indie-Pop and Fresh Finds playlists for his single 'dayDREAM' - which has over 293,000 streams on Spotify. In this episode Selman discusses how an injury when he was 14 caused him to pursue music, what it's like being an independent artist in Central Texas, the projects he is working on and why he thinks short-form music is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Please note the conversation below was recorded on August 8, 2019. 

Today on the Fine Tuned Music Series we feature a segment of a roundtable discussion with Dr. Gary Mortenson, dean of Baylor's School of Music, Keep Waco Loud's Katie Selman and Jacob Green, and Dick Gimble, instructor at McLennan Community College and son of music legend Johnny Gimble. 

Robert Frank was an artist who showed what photography could reveal about ourselves.

Great art shows us something fundamental about ourselves. It can show us things in a fresh way that we thought we knew; it can show us something that we may not have known; and it can show us something that we may not want to know.

"Home Going" is just one of a number of superb, high-energy gospel songs by Detroit native Victoria Hawkins on Houston's funky Peacock label. 

Ashley Bean Thornton is back in the KWBU Studio for Act Locally Waco.  Ashley and Brodie Bashaw bring us details on getting involved in activities happening in and around Waco this week.

We hope most of you have been out enjoying Waco Restaurant Week. You’ve still got today and tomorrow to join in this citywide celebration of all things yummy. A few of the remaining events include the Waco Restaurant Community Dinner tonight at 7 PM at Cultivate 7twelve on Austin Avenue.  Tickets are $75 for a bottle of Wine, a three-course meal, dessert Cocktail and Live Music & Entertainment.  (more)

Adventures of a voracious reader who works in an independent bookstore

As my readers are aware, I have a craving for novels about books, bookshelves, bookstores, and libraries.  The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman is her third novel. 

Abbi writes, “Larchmont Boulevard is the linear heart of Larchmont Village, populated by cafés, restaurants, boutiques, artisanal stores of many kinds, and one of the few remaining independent bookstores in Los Angeles.  That’s where Nina Hill works, spinster of the parish and heroine of both her own life and the book you’re holding in your lovely hand” (4).  I feel as though I am nearly in the presence of Jane Austen.

Western art is both popular and very familiar - we know it when we see it. But there are some western artists working today who are innovating within the style and who are worth seeking out. 

The masterful Soulfully album by the legendary Andrae Crouch and the Disciples is one of their best, in part because of the memorable anthem, "Through It All." 

Waco Restaurant Week, Bubba's 33 annual charity car show, Historic Waco Foundation Family Fun Day, and Rocky Horror Picture Show Shadowcast auditions are just a few things highlighted on this edition of Act Locally Waco.

Excellent collection of poetry by the greatest Greek poet.

The Texas Commission on the Arts is a quiet state agency that seeks to spread access to the arts to everyone in the state.

Here’s a little Texas tidbit for those who have grown tired of telling friends from elsewhere that we have 254 counties: The state of Texas now offers more than 500 different kinds of specialty license plates.

I’m oddly impressed by this, but I’m much more pleased by the fact that anywhere I’ve gone in the state the most prevalent one of these seems to be the “State of the Arts” plate.  For every one of them, the Texas Commission on the Arts receives $22 of the $30 annual special plate fee. And I think it’s a relatively safe bet that most of the people who have one on their car count as a friend of the arts.

Beginning in 1946, the beloved Gotham Records label released a host of quality 45s through 1958, including this happy, up-tempo gospel romp, "Lord, I'm Done Done" by Rudolph Lewis. 

This week on Conversations With Creative Waco, host Rae Jefferson interviews Angela Everett, the new director of Mission Waco's Jubilee Theatre - a performance arts space for the community, especially young children.