By Rose Aguilar, Truthout | YouTube. From 1879 until the 1960s, more than 100,000 American Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to boarding schools. Families risked imprisonment if they stood in the way or attempted to take back their children.
Continue reading →By Katherine Dunham, Doubleday 1969, University of Chicago Press Edition 1994 | YouTube | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. In 1936, Katherine Mary Dunham, a brilliant and adventurous young woman torn between dance and anthropology, went solo to Haiti to study primitive dance and ritual. Videos include Dunham in the dance sequence of Stormy Weather and in a 1962 interview.
Continue reading →By Josefina Ortega, Granma | Haiti Chery. During a 1932 visit to Cuba, George Gershwin struck up a friendship with the musician Ignacio Piñeiro and took some musical notations of his works. The ideas for the Cuban Overture were thus born.
Continue reading →By B. Traven, Hill and Wang, New York, 1967 | Scribd | Wikipedia | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is regarded as B. Traven’s masterpiece, but this book, written in 1935, is merely the best-known work by a master storyteller who lived and wrote for another 34 years. Traven’s body of work celebrates wildness and chronicles the loss of individual freedom in his lifetime.
Continue reading →By Christopher Minster, Latin American History/About.com. On May 5, 1862, at the Battle of Puebla, the French attacked Mexico to try to collect a debt after President Benito Juarez declared bankruptcy from a civil war, but the French were soundly defeated by a cavalry led by Porfirio Diaz.
Continue reading →By Wilson Bigaud | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Although Bigaud spent most of his life about 40 miles southwest of the capital in the village of Vialet, near the town of Petit-Goâve. He liked to walk in the countryside, hike little trails, talk to villagers, and return home to paint his day.
Continue reading →By Muriel Kane, Raw Story | Interview of Isak Gerson with Alison George | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. “Life as we know it originated with the DNA molecule’s ability to duplicate itself, irrespective of the original creation of the Universe.… Copying is fundamental to life and runs constantly all around us…. ‘From all at one and from one to all – and then back – exchange without beginning and without end.'”
Continue reading →By Jean Edner Dorvil in: A Taste of Haiti (Hyppocrene books, NY) | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Tomtom ak Kalalou Gombo is traditional to the town of Jeremie, in southern Haiti, but in colonial times this was the everyday dish of the Haitians. It is never eaten alone.
Continue reading →By Tiken Jah Fakoly | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Tiken Jah Fakoly originates from the Ivory Coast and describes as his mission, “to wake up the consciences.”
Continue reading →By Walfredo Angulo, Prensa Latina | Granma | Haiti Chery. Jose Saramago wrote Claraboya in the 1950’s but received no word from the publisher for 40 years. The dictatorial regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal had probably censored the novel. It has just appeared in Portuguese and Spanish (English | Spanish).
Continue reading →By Frederico Garcia Lorca | Translation by A. S. Kline | Paintings by Gabriel Alix | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Frederico Garcia Lorca describes the lullabies of Spain in their cultural contexts and with a singular respect for children’s appreciation of abstraction. One lullaby from the region of Burgos is reminiscent of Haiti’s “Dodo Titit.”
Continue reading →Press Release, Prometheus Radio Project | FCC. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to open the airwaves to Low Power FM (LPFM) stations; this will allow for the first new urban community radio stations in the U.S. in decades. The FCC will start to accept applications as early as Fall 2012.
Continue reading →Dodo Titit. Commentary and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | Sheet music photo from Lullabologist. Haiti’s classical lullaby. Verses are improvised to report the different chores of Mom and Dad. They are sung softly until the little one sleeps.
Continue reading →By Vaclav Havel, in: The Natural World as Political Problem – Essays on Modern Man (Prague: Edice Expedice, Vol. 188, Feb 1984).
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