FROM EGYPT: Umm Kulthum is loved across the Arab world, but her legacy belongs to Egypt. Here is “Biography of Love”, a passionate, epic performance with music by Baligh Hamdi and the words of poet Morsi Jamil Aziz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrJ4DUP1oss&t=634sFROM INDIA: Watch the hands! Alla Rakha is a legend whose mastery of the tablas is absolutely mesmerizing and incomparable. And hereditary: as we can see in this recording where he performs with his sons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1lRTdqWHsFROM ALBANIA: Dritëro Agolli was an Albanian postmodernist writer who is best remembered for his satirical rendering of quixotic apparatchik Zylo. Meanwhile, his poetry still speaks to the heart, adorned yet blunt.
FROM JAMAICA: We love it when people genuinely love the country they’re from. Here is the reggae legend Bunny Rugs (of the band Third World) celebrating 50 years of Jamaican independence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PllKjgJ1fZoFROM CZECHIA: There are few filmmakers who can create a mood as affecting and meaningful as Věra Chytilová. The feminist powerhouse’s “Daisies” is an absolute must: but her career deserves proper inquiry for those who want to know more about Eastern European feminism
FROM IRAN: Bozorg Alavi had to live in exile, away from his homeland, both during the Pahlavi and after the revolution, when things turned regressive. However, his work is at the heart of Iranian literature.
FROM RUSSIA: Pyotr Konchalovsky sired a whole dynasty of people shaping the many facets of Soviet and Russian culture: numerous writers and filmmakers. His own heritage is in the eloquent portraits of friends and family.
FROM US: Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American actor to gain prominence at home and internationally, including starring alongside Marlene Dietrich in “Shanghai Express”. Her career was hindered by the racism and segregationism of the industry and the society.
FROM CUBA & US: When Herbie Hancock subbed for Chick Corea in Mongo Santamaría’s band at a Bronx nightclub one evening, this legendary rendering of “Watermelon Man” with conga drums was first played: here recorded in 1980.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUvj9qYP_JA
FROM US: Langston Hughes dedicated his poem “Kids Who Die” to Angelo Herndon, a Black communist sentenced to a chain gang for organizing industrial workers in Atlanta—but also many others then and now who lose young lives fighting.
