Art and Culture

What you read can open up the doors of the art world.

This episode orginially aired July 15, 2019

As a historian, I’m often asked if I can recommend books to people who are interested in learning more about art and the art world. I love questions like this because I’m a perfect example of how easily you can educate yourself about things. All it takes is curiosity and the desire to do it.

One good place to start is with an overview of American art. My favorite is critic Robert Hughes’ 1997 book “American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America.” It’s not written as a scholarly text, but for general readers who want to know. Such an overview provides a good chronology of the artists and movements that come and go through the ages.

The Lockhart Singers were one of the great COGIC groups to record for Chicago’s legendary Vee-Jay Records label.

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The first Conversations with Creative Waco of 2121 spotlights Creative Waco's launch of their next round of artists and creative development courses. Lu Ann Jennings joins program host, Kennedy Sam.  Also Dr. Tyrha Lindsay-Warren sits down with Kennedy to talk about the upcoming Waco Family and Faith International Film Festival. 

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

Many of my prized novels are centered around bookshops and libraries.  I thought I had a wealth of these titles, but I always seem to find other examples.  The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs invited itself into my collection. 

Familiarity is not the most important element in experiencing art.

What do “Stars and Stripes Forever,” the “Mona Lisa,” Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” all have in common?  Well, for one thing, they’re some of the familiar workhorses of our culture: things that a lot of people automatically think of when they hear the word “art.”

You’ll hear echoes of Mahalia Jackson in Georgia Louis’ version of “Move on Up a Little Higher.”

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Hear the full SHOUT! segment here. 

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

I stumbled on Crossings by Alex Landragin in a local book store in Waco.  For some reason, I was looking for something to pique my imagination.  I was about to leave the store that day, but I decided on a whim to try it out, with a careful eye on my “Rule of Fifty.”  When I got home, I began to read, and before I knew it, I was closing in on 100 pages.  What kept me going was the bizarre changes the characters underwent.  I am now glad I took it all the way to the end.  That end is what I needed to keep me in suspense.

Jazz isn’t the only art form that contains individualism and improvisation.

If you happened to catch my Christmas jazz show last month, you heard me remark about the individualistic character of jazz, even in the context of old tried-and-true Christmas standards. The impulse behind that however is by no means limited to jazz.  Individualism is at the core of all the arts.

It would be too simplistic to say that all art is improvisational Like a jazz solo. But it is accurate to say that all art comes from the workings of the brain of the individual artist. And all artists are different. So when you hear an improvised jazz solo you are 

Guitar great Benny Turner got his start with the Kindly Shepherds on this wonderful gospel tune, “Every Year Carries a Number.”
 

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Hear the full SHOUT! segment here. 

Listen to this week's featured song here:

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

Peter Heller has penned four outstanding suspense novels.  His first was The Dog Stars, followed with The Painter, then The River, and now his latest is Celine, the story of a women who has a hobby of finding lost people.  She carries a Glock 26 and is not afraid to use it.

Decades after the start of Modernism, a handful of artists wanted to make art that was part of society again.

We certainly live in unsettled times. Even as the New Year begins and we hope it will be an improvement, not many people are thinking that things are going to instantly return to normal.  On the contrary, we will probably be living with the effects of the crescendoing trauma of the past few years for quite some time.

Those same remarks could have been uttered 100 years ago without changing a single word. Artists in Europe looked around in 1920 and surveyed a society that had been completely uprooted and destroyed.  The most devasting war that anyone could imagine had been followed by a global pandemic that killed more people than the war did.  In the face of this, what were European artists to do? 

A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City offers us one possible

Anita Butler’s towering “Every Day of My Life” is one of several highlights from the otherwise unknown Richburgh Record label.

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Hear the full SHOUT! segment here. 

Listen to this week's featured song here:

Hello!  I’m Jim McKeown.  Welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Lisa See has written a number of fun and interesting stories of Asian women.  The latest such story I read is China Dolls.  It describes the control young men have over their sisters from 1938 to 1988.

Remembering a pianist who created a style of jazz all his own.

I don’t think I would’ve expected an internationally renowned jazzman to have started off in life wanting to be a rancher instead of wanting to play the piano. And it probably isn’t the case very often.  But, it was the case once.

This month is the 100th anniversary of the birth of pianist Dave Brubeck. Brubeck was born in Concord, California on December 6, 1920. His mom taught him and his two older brothers piano lessons. And, as he remembered, his brothers took to music but he did not. He didn’t want to play the piano.  He wanted to follow his dad into ranching.

In the late 1930s, he enrolled in the veterinary program at what’s now the University of the Pacific but apparently his professors recognized something in him even if he did not.  His zoology professor told him to change his major to music and stop wasting both their time.  He graduated in 1942, was drafted into the Army,

The Pilgrim Travelers ruled the gospel highway in the 1950s with songs like this arrangement of the old spiritual, "Troubled in Mind.

Hear the full song here.