Music Magg

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night CBS-TV presented the 2020 Black Entertainment Television (BET) awards show — the first one I’ve seen since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic upended the world and suddenly banned large gatherings of people under the same roof (unless you’re President Trump, who can hold all the large gatherings he wants and subject people to viral exposure while having them sign a release that they won’t sue him if they get it) — and given that it took place in the middle of not only the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic but also the turmoil over the George Floyd killing and the sheer number of police murders of unarmed Black people and other people of color, the show buzzed with righteous anger that came forth mostly from the rappers on the program. Once again I’m forced to rely on my hastily scribbled notes to determine who performed what and what the songs’ titles were — unlike the producers of the Global Citizen telecast, t

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved The TV show I particularly wanted to watch yesterday was the 2020 edition of the  Global Citizen  telecast — which has been an annual event for several years now, sponsored by a foundation underwritten by several large corporations (including Microsoft, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble) and designed to encourage young people to become “global citizen” activists to, among other things, expand the rights of women, access to education and health care in Third World countries and combat racism and sexism in the developed world. The way the concert usually works is that young people working on these various causes submit reports on what they’re doing and a group of judges goes over their applications and awards the most deserving entrants tickets to an all-star mega-concert featuring the major pop-music artists of today. Obviously the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic changed that; the projects

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved On Wednesday, June 24 at 8 p.m. I watched an unusual presentation on ABC-TV, a rerun of a show they’d done 3 ½ years ago on the opening of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African-American History, hosted (or at least introduced) by Oprah Winfrey and held at the Kennedy Center in December 2016) with the rather awkward title Taking the Stage: African-American Music and the Stories That Changed America. It was originally broadcast on ABC January 12, 2017 — eight days before Donald Trump took over from Barack Obama as President — and Barack and Michelle Obama were in the Presidential box, sometimes clapping and singing along. Not only did the sight of the Obamas in full Presidential regalia make me nostalgic for the days when we had a President not only of professional competence but personal integrity as well, it was amazing to see him recite the words as rapper Chuck D. of the pioneering gro