Tutti i passi che ho fatto, nella mia vita, mi hanno portato qui, ora

Photograph of Louis Armstrong, Velma Middleton, and Ray Martino backstage in Italy, 1949. A professor I had during my graduate program in Italy had my cohort and I report to Piazza Santa Maria Novella for class one day. She instructed us to find the place that was engraved with the following saying: “tutti i passi...

Armstrong’s “Social Networks”

On the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s (LAHM) digital collections webpage, I keep a folder entitled “Random Items” that holds a group of interesting but unrelated digitized archival objects. This past week I re-examined some of the objects in the folder, which includes a 1968 telegram written by Armstrong that mentions Barbra Streisand’s voice, a photo...

Fragmented Stories in Perspective

The Palace of Stories. That’s the name my friends and I settled on calling our first floor, two-bedroom/ basement apartment located in a modern gentrified Brooklyn building. We made it official by making it our WIFI name, so whenever someone visited and needed access, those words would display on their setting options in bold letters....

The Social Lives of “What A Wonderful World”

In 1970 Louis Armstrong made an appearance on The David Frost Show. During his visit, he sang an intimate version of “What A Wonderful World,” a song originally released by ABC Records as a single three years prior. If you ever wondered what Armstrong would have looked and sounded like as a solo cabaret vocalist,...

Nonviolent Direct Art (NDA)

My last post ended with the possibility of considering the use of artistic and social practices as a way to engage in nonviolent direct action; specifically referencing the concept from the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. I have chosen to use this term because when it is in reference to groups that were...

Listening to Louis – Part II

Listening to Louis as an ethnomusicologist Do I listen to Louis as an ethnomusicologist? This is a question I have been pondering since my last blog post in which I described the act of listening to Louis as a deeply personal experience that evokes an emotional response. I appreciate that my undergraduate and graduate ethnomusicology...

Grey Spaces

It was the invitation to “engage in a nonviolent direct action program,”1 that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Birmingham, Alabama in April of 1963. In his letter written from the Birmingham Jail, he explains in detail the need for the direct action program, as “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in...

Listening to Louis – Part I

Listening to Louis in “my little corner of the world” It is another day. I walk into my living room, where my beat-up black Ikea desk rests against one of the walls. I open my laptop, turn on my desk lamp, check my email, look over my list of “to-dos,” and begin my work. During...

Grey Space

While writing my last post I began thinking more about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. I began considering what his ideals were, who was impacted by them and therefore impacted by the loss of him. I listened over and over to the recording of his “Free at Last” speech that I previously shared a clip...

The Woman Behind Louis?

Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Disney, Rachel Robinson, Jackie Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Coretta Scott King, and Lucille Armstrong -- these are some of the names of American women whose stories are told and intertwined with those of their husbands. This week I was determined to answer an inquiry I raised in the first blog of what I...