Hank Williams

Sunday, February 9th Show: Nelson Mandela and the South African Freedom Struggle

Photo: Sharpeville Massacre via Wikicommons

The next show will air on Sunday, February 9th, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. During this membership/fund drive installment, Suga’ in My Bowl presents a rebroadcast of a tribute to Nelson Mandela and the South African freedom struggle writ large in honor of Mandela’s transition and to continue to not forget this chapter as part of Black History Month. Please join us and help keep this listener-supported experiment alive. In this show, we’ll take a look at how jazz played a part in the struggle both in the US and on the continent. We’ll also look at the relationship of jazz to musicians in South Africa and how South African musicians had to leave because of the danger that the music posed.



Since Mandela was not the only one in the movement, we’ll present some critical analysis from activists and experts to assess how his life and work fit into the broader goal of ending the apartheid regime. Nana Dr. Leonard Jeffries, recently retired Professor of Black Studies (and former department head) at the City College of New York will walk us through the big picture of Mandela’s role in the struggle and what it meant internationally from a talk recorded live this week at a community forum in Brooklyn. Omowale Clay of the New York-based December 12th Movement will provide insight into the ongoing work on reparations and radio personality Bob Law will talk about media’s important role in the movement.

We’ll then turn to the role that music and artists played in the international struggle. Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music at Harvard University and author of Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa, will talk about the connections forged by African American artists. Poet Rashida Ismaili Abubakr will discuss how exiled South African singer Sathima Bea Benjamin and musical collaborator Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) raised consciousness with their art.

Finally, in signature Suga’ style, look for as much great music as we can fit in from Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Sathima Bea Benjamin and Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, the Blue Notes, Archie Shepp, and Randy Weston!

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

We’re not offering any special premium or thank-you gift this week. We’re just asking listeners who can to donate to WBAI in support of our show. You can give as little as $5 online and full station membership is $25. Anything you can pitch in will help a lot, especially in sending the message to station management that the type of show we do is still relevant.

Show, produced, engineered, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Web Extras

Watch Hugh Masekela perform “Stimela (The Coal Train)” live at UNESCO’s 2013 International Jazz Day.

Sunday February 2nd Show: Alex Blake

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday February 2nd, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an exclusive interview with bassist Alex Blake. Listen to a short preview of the show below.



Alex Blake (Alejandro Blake Fearon, Jr.) is a contemporary master bassist on both the classical upright (or double) bass and on the electric bass. He is an innovator and pioneer in the development of contemporary musical genres across the spectrum from Latin/salsa, Jazz, rock, fusion, funk, Afro-Caribbean, bossa nova, flamenco, and soul, pop, R&B, country and world music. His self-developed playing style reveals a unique approach to the instrument borrowing from cello and guitar techniques resulting in a dynamic, high impact stage presence whether solo or with other musicians.

Originally from Panama, his family traditions included the gift of music from his father, a distinguished Latin musician himself, who introduced the trumpet and bass to his son. Mr. Blake began playing professionally in New York with the masters of Latin and salsa including Mongo Santamaria and Celia Cruz as a child. His unique approach of melodic and rhythmic slapping caught the attention of the legendary Sun Ra and Jazz icon Dizzy Gillespie to record and tour Europe at major festivals and venues while still a teenager. Mr. Blake became an in-demand bassist, performing and collaborating with an astonishing number of top artists including Freddie Hubbard, Astrid Gilberto, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Billy Cobham and the Manhattan Transfer among many.

As a composer, songwriter and educator, Mr. Blake’s original compositions encompass multiple musical styles from his international background and experiences. He has recorded on multiple Grammy-winning albums, endorsed Ibanez and other brands and has received numerous accolades and awards for a lifetime in music. Mr. Blake tours internationally with Randy Weston and his African Rhythms band, performs at the major festivals and clubs and is now working on an upcoming CD (Colors) with his own band in New York City.

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Produced, engineered, edited and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Bruno Bollaert (volume 12). Creative Commons licensed.

Web Extras:

Watch this short Alex Blake bass solo with Randy Weston’s African Rhythms at the 2008 Charlie Parker Festival in NYC’s Tompkins Square Park.


Watch a longer 2013 Blake solo at York College’s Performing Arts Center.

Sunday January 19th Show: Steve Turre

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday Janury 19, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an exclusive interview with trombonist, seashellist, composer and bassist Steve Turre.



One of the world’s preeminent jazz innovators, trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre, has consistently won both the Readers’ and Critics’ polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat, and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist (shells). Turre was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues and jazz. While attending Sacramento State University, he joined the Escovedo Brothers salsa band, which began his career-long involvement with that genre.

In 1972 Steve Turre‘s career picked up momentum when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre’s mentor Woody Shaw brought him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. After his tenure with Blakey, Turre went on to work with a diverse list of musicians from the jazz, Latin, and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The latter introduced hum to the seashell as an instrument. Soon after that, while touring in Mexico City with Woody Shaw, Turre’s relatives informed him that his ancestors similarly played the shells. Since then, Turre has incorporated seashells into his diverse musical style.

In addition to performing as a member of the Saturday Night Live Band since 1984, Turre leads several different ensembles. Sanctified Shells utilizes the seashell in a larger context, transforming his horn section into a “shell choir”. Turre’s Spring 1999 Verve release, Lotus Flower, showcases his Sextet With Strings. The recording explores many great standards and original compositions arranged by Turre for a unique instrumentation of trombone and shells, violin, cello, piano, bass and drums. Turre’s quartet and quintet provide a setting based in tradition and stretching the limits conceptually and stylistically. In the Summer of 2000, Telarc released In The Spur of the Moment. This recording features Steve with three different quartets, each with a different and distinct master pianist: Ray Charles, Chucho Valdes, and Stephen Scott.

Turre’s self-titled Verve release pioneers a unique artistic vision, drawing upon jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian sources. This innovative recording also features Cassandra Wilson, Randy Brecker, Graciela, Mongo Santamaria and J.J. Johnson. Previously Turre recorded Right There and Rhythm Within, featuring Herbie Hancock, Jon Faddis, Pharoah Sanders, and Sanctified Shells, on Verve’s subsidiary label, Antilles.

Steve Turre continually evolves as a musician and arranger. He has a strong command of all musical genres and when it comes to his distinct brand of jazz, he always keeps one foot in the past and one in the future.

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Produced, engineered, edited and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Sunday, January 12th Show: Alphonse Mouzon

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday Janury 12, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an exclusive interview with Chairman/CEO of Tenacious Records, composer, arranger, producer, drummer, multi-instrumentalist and actor Alphonse Mouzon.



Alphonse Mouzon, (who is an African American mixed with French and Blackfoot Indian) was born on November 21st 1948 in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Bonds-Wilson High School where he received his early musical training under the direction of saxophonist high school music teacher Lonnie Hamilton III, and took some drum lessons from Charles Garner before playing gigs with the Lonnie Hamilton Band. Following graduation from high school, he moved to New York to study music and drama at The City College of New York and medicine at Manhattan Medical School. Mouzon took drum lessons from jazz pianist Billy Taylor’s drummer Bobby Thomas. While attending college, Mouzon played in the pit band of the Broadway show PROMISES, PROMISES after being recommended by Thomas. Mouzon worked as a medical technologist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital after graduating from Manhattan Medical, but abandoned a medical career as he his musical reputation grew.

Mouzon’s musical associations read like a veritable Who’s Who of Modern Jazz and Pop Music. His talents cover a broad range of musical disciplines and philosophies. He was the rhythmic foundation for the far reaching musical explorations of pianist McCoy Tyner. He was a charter member along with keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, of the group Weather Report. Along with guitarist Larry Coryell, Mouzon was co-founder of The Eleventh House, the seminal fusion band of the seventies. Mouzon and Coryell still tour together in a trio and with the Eleventh House. Mouzon’s musical credits include the 1991 film Dingo and accompanying Miles Davis soundtrack. The often demanding Davis was impressed enough to praise Mouzon’s skill in his autobiography.

Mouzon’s name can be found in just about every Jazz Encyclopedia/ Dictionary, and is listed the 2nd edition of Marquis Who’s Who In Entertainment and Who’s Who In The World. He was voted the #2 BEST MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST in the 1995 Jazziz Magazine Annual Readers Poll.

Mouzon draws inspiration from his Christian faith and has survived prostate cancer. He strongly encourages every man over 35 to have a PSA blood test done to make sure cancer is not present, since early detection is a lifesaver.

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour. Also on the blog this week will be a cheat sheet to NYC’s Winter Jazz Fest, highlighting former Suga’ guests.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Photo: Alphonse Mouzon. Courtesy of the Mouzon website.


Web Extras:

Watch this clip from the 1991 film Dingo, which has a cameo appearances by Miles Davis and Mouzon. Mouzon can be seen briefly in the background here:



Watch Mouzon perform “The Funky Waltz” with the Eleventh House Reunion band in this 2013 live concert clip:


Watch this live 1971 performance of the McCoy Tyner Quartet with Mouzon:

Sunday January 5th Show: Yusef Lateef Memorial

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday Janury 5, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will be a memorial to the recently deceased Yusef Lateef. We’ll feature a 2010 interview with Lateef and a new interview with long-time collaborator and friend Adam Rudolph. The original show also featured an interview with journalist and educator Herb Boyd, who co-wrote Lateef’s autobiography The Gentle Giant.



Yusef Lateef is a Grammy Award-winning composer, performer, recording artist, author, educator and philosopher who has been a major force on the international musical scene for more than six decades. He is universally acknowledged as one of the great masters and innovators in the African American tradition of autophysiopsychic music — that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self. In 2010, he was declared a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts.

As a virtuoso on a broad spectrum of reed instruments — tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol, sarewa, and taiwan koto — Lateef has introduced delightful new sounds and blends of tone colors to audiences all over the world.

As a composer, he compiled a catalog of works not only for the quartets and quintets he has led, but for symphony and chamber orchestras, stage bands, small ensembles, vocalists, choruses and solo pianists. His extended works have been performed by the WDR (Cologne), NDR (Hamburg), Atlanta, Augusta and Detroit Symphony Orchestras and the Symphony of the New World. He won a Grammy in 1987 for his recording of “Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony,” on which he performed all the parts.

As an educator, Lateef devoted much of his life to exploring the methodology of autophysiopsychic music in various cultures and passing what he learned on to new generations of students. He was a Five Colleges professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, from which he was awarded a Ph.D. in Education in 1975. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “An Overview of Western and Islamic Education.”

As an author, Yusef Lateef has published a novella, A Night in the Garden of Love, and two collections of short stories, Spheres and Rain Shapes.

Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Photo: Yusef Lateef. Creative Commons licensed by Flickr user Tom Beetz via Wikimedia.

At this time, we don’t have information on memorial and funeral arrangements. See our blog and Facebook page for updates.


Web Extras:

Read his obituary in the The Guardian newspaper.
Watch Lateef and Rudolph in a live 2010 performance in Milan, Italy:

Sunday 12/22 Show: Nelson Mandela and the South African freedom struggle

Photo: Sharpeville Massacre via Wikicommons

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday December 22, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of Suga’ in My Bowl presents a tribute to Nelson Mandela and the South African freedom struggle writ large in honor of Mandela’s recent transition. In this show, we’ll take a look at how jazz played a part in the struggle both in the US and on the continent. We’ll also look at the relationship of jazz to musicians in South Africa, how South African musicians had to leave because of the danger that the music posed.



Since Mandela was not the only one in the movement, we’ll present some critical analysis from activists and experts to assess how his life and work fit into the broader goal of ending the apartheid regime. Nana Dr. Leonard Jeffries, recently retired Professor of Black Studies (and former department head) at the City College of New York will walk us through the big picture of Mandela’s role in the struggle and what it meant internationally from a talk recorded live this week at a community forum in Brooklyn. Omowale Clay of the New York-based December 12th Movement will provide insight into the ongoing work on reparations and radio personality Bob Law will talk about media’s important role in the movement.

We’ll then turn to the role that music and artists played in the international struggle. Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music at Harvard University and author of Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa, will talk about the connections forged by African American artists. Poet Rashida Ismaili Abubakr will discuss how exiled South African singer Sathima Bea Benjamin and musical collaborator Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) raised consciousness with their art.

Finally, in signature Suga’ style, look for as much great music as we can fit in from Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Sathima Bea Benjamin and Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, the Blue Notes, Archie Shepp, and Randy Weston!

There will also be a year-end edition of our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests.

Show, produced, engineered, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Web Extras

Watch Hugh Masekela perform “Stimela (The Coal Train)” live at UNESCO’s 2013 International Jazz Day.

Sunday 12/15 Show: Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny. Photo credit: Flickr user Steevithak/ Creative Commons licensed.

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday December 15, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an encore presentation of a 2010 interview with the incredibly versatile guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny. It’s a fund drive special, so we’ll be offering the interview and one of Metheny’s CDs as as thanks for a pledge to the station.

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City on August 12, 1954 into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience at an unusually young age. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young Missouri native already displayed his soon-to-become trademarked playing style, which blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility – a way of playing and improvising that was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional “jazz guitar” sound for a new generation of players. Throughout his career, Metheny has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.

Metheny joined us via telephone for an hourlong wide-ranging interview before a rare week-long stint at New York’s Blue Note with bassist Larry Grenadier. Metheny talks about his use of electronics in music, the art of improvisation, his innovative Orchestrion releases and tours, his stint teaching at the prestigious Berklee College of Music as a teenager, and much more. We’ll play excerpts of the interview and music from the entire spectrum of his incredibly prolific career.

We’ll also share cuts from his 2010 What’s It All About solo release, which we’ll be offering along with a copy of the full interview for people who donate to WBAI. All About Jazz‘s Nenad Georgevski calls it “an essential record” in his positive review, noting that “Metheny impresses more with subtlety and melodic logic than with firecrackers. In the end, he has made a record that can lure the listener into emotional spaces that enchant, seduce and delight.”

Please join us and help keep this listener-supported experiment alive. WBAI. Donate to WBAI or pledge for the CD set if you can, but be sure to join us for Suga’ in My Bowl’s latest musical trip!

See the full track list and info on What’s it All About on Allmusic.

Engineered and Produced by Joyce Jones. Hosted by Arts Producers Joyce Jones and Hank Williams.

Web extras:

Watch Metheny play a solo version of “Into the Dream” with the Pikasso 42 string guitar.



In memory of the recently deceased guitar great Jim Hall, watch them perform together live with (former Suga’ guest) bassist Christian McBride.

Sunday 12/8 Show: Bob James

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday December 8, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an interview with pianist, composer, arranger and producer Bob James. This interview originally aired in June 2006 as part of WBAI’s Hip Hop Takeover. We discussed James’ career and his relationship to the hip hop art form.



The career of Bob James is long, varied and continues to evolve at every turn. From his first days in Marshall, Missouri, the music of Bob James has captivated audiences throughout the world.

Discovered by Quincy Jones at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1963, James recorded his first solo album, Bold Conceptions, that year for Mercury Records. 58 albums and innumerable awards would follow through five decades. He honed his skills working with Creed Taylor, working on albums for artists like Hank Crawford, Grover Washington, Jr, among others. While with CTI, James found great popular success overseeing significant hits for Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Maynard Ferguson, and Kenny Loggins.

In 1974, James finally recorded his own album, One, which launched a lifelong career of recording and performing live. After three more albums, James began his own label, Tappan Zee Records. This allowed James to spend more time in the studio, focusing on his own creative works. It was during this time that he recorded his own gold seller, Touchdown, which included his composition, “Angela”, the instrumental theme from the television sitcom Taxi, and possibly James’ best known work. James composed all the original music used in the series for its entire run. One On One, the first in three collaborations with Earl Klugh, was awarded a Grammy in 1980 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and has sold over a million copies. During this time, James set the standard for the smooth jazz sound in the late 1970s.

James is recognized as one of the progenitors of smooth jazz, however, his music has also had a profound effect on the history of hip hop music, having been sampled often. Two of James’ songs – “Nautilus” from 1974′s One and “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” from 1975′s Two – are among the most sampled in hip hop history. According to whosampled.com, “Nautilus” and “Take Me to Mardi Gras” have been sampled in thirty-two and forty-three hip-hop recordings, respectively. The title track from his 1981 album Sign of the Times was sampled in De La Soul‘s “Keepin’ the Faith”, and Warren G‘s “Regulate”. His “Angela” was sampled in the track “Cab Fare” by Souls of Mischief. The track “El Verano” from the 1977 album “BJ4″ is used as a sample in the song “Blown Away” by the Cocoa Brovaz and also in the Masta Ace Track “NY Confidential”. N.W.A‘s “Alwayz into Somethin’” uses a sample of “Storm King” from the album Three. “Can’t Wait” by Redman features a sample of “Caribbean Nights” from the album Touchdown. English Drum & Bass pioneer Adam F extensively sampled “Westchester Lady” on his 1995 breakthrough release Circles. Röyksopp sampled his version of “You’re as Right as Rain” for their instrumental track “Eple.” In addition, James is mentioned in a verse by André 3000 on “Black Ice” from Goodie Mob’s second album Still Standing.

While recording his Grand Piano Canyon album in 1990, James reunited with longtime friend drummer Harvey Mason, Jr. It would also be the first time James would work with guitarist Lee Ritenour, and bassist Nathan East. This would be the start of something beautiful, as these early sessions ignited a spark which would engulf the Jazz world as Fourplay. Fourplay’s first album was recorded and released in 1991. The Group would collaborate on a total of three albums, until 1998 when Ritenour left the group, and Larry Carlton took over. This version of Fourplay continued the group’s huge success for seven more albums. After 12 years, Carlton decided to delve further into his solo career, and the band brought in guitarist Chuck Loeb in 2010.

In 1985 James moved to Warner Bros Records, and kicked things off with Double Vision, a collaboration with David Sanborn, and produced by Tommy LiPuma. Double Vision was another Grammy winner, selling over a million albums.

Bob James & David Sanborn introduced Quartette Humaine in May 2013. It’s the first collaboration between James & Sanborn since their 1986 Platinum-Selling, GRAMMY® Award-Winning Album, Double Vision, and features bassist James Genus & drummer Steve Gadd on the all acoustic project.

Quartette Humaine pays tribute to the late iconic pianist-composer David Brubeck, putting a prime spotlight on his work that featured alto saxophonist Paul Desmond.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Bob James will appear with Fourplay at New York City’s Blue Note jazz club from December 10-15, 2013.

Web Extras:

Watch the intro and closing credits of the 1970s TV show Taxi, which features James’s “Angela”:



Watch Fourplay perform “Blues Force” live in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2009.

Sunday 12/1 Show: Harlem Nocturne with Farah Jasmine Griffin

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars, pass the word on to friends, and share on social media if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday December 1, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an interview with Columbia University Professor Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II. You can hear a short preview of the show below:



As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, Harlem’s diverse array of artists and activists launched a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender.

In Harlem Nocturne, esteemed scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin tells the stories of three black female artists whose creative and political efforts fueled this movement for change: novelist Ann Petry, a major new literary voice; choreographer and dancer Pearl Primus, a pioneer in her field; and composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams, a prominent figure in the emergence of Be-Bop. As Griffin shows, these women made enormous strides for social justice during the war, laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement before the Cold War temporarily froze their democratic dreams.

A rich account of three distinguished artists and the city that inspired them, Harlem Nocturne captures a period of unprecedented vitality and progress for African Americans and women in the United States.

Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African American Studies at Columbia University, and also served as the Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies. The author of Clawing at the Limits of Cool, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery, and Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends, for which she was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Dr. Griffin previously appeared on the show to talk about Clawing at the Limits of Cool on John Coltrane and Miles Davis’s musical collaboration and as guest co-host for our show with pianist Geri Allen (audio in our archive).

Don’t miss the latest “On the Bandstand” segment from Hank Williams for announcements of upcoming performances from former Suga’ guests.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Sunday 11/17 Show: Eartha Kitt Tribute

Reminder: Suga’ in My Bowl now airs weekly on WBAI, except for the last Sunday of the month! Please update your calendars and pass the word on to friends if you like the show.

The next show will air on Sunday November 17, 2013 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature an interviews with Kitt Shapiro (Eartha Kitt’s daughter) and singer Rene Marie as we honor her life and work of of Eartha Kitt. Listen to a short preview below:



We’ll also revisit our conversation with Rene Marie about her first musical tribute, “I Wanna Be Evil: With Love to Eartha Kitt“, which was released on Tuesday, November 12. Marie wrote on her facebook page that she “swore [she] would never do a tribute CD. But I fell in love with Eartha kitt and the damage was done!” There will be an opportunity for listeners to win tickets to see Marie during her run at Jazz Standard from November 20-24.

Eartha Mae Kitt was an international star who gives new meaning to the word versatile. She has distinguished herself in film, theater, cabaret, music and on television. Miss Kitt was one of only a handful of performers to be nominated for a Tony (three times), the Grammy (twice), and Emmy Award (twice). She regularly enthralled New York nightclub audiences during her extended stays at The Cafè Carlyle and these intimate performances have been captured in her recording, Eartha Kitt, Live at The Carlyle.

Miss Kitt’s distinctive voice has enchanted an entirely new generation of fans. Young fans loved her as YZMA, the villain, in Disney’s animated feature “The Emperor’s New Groove”, (2001 Annie Award for Best Vocal Performance / Animated Feature). Miss Kitt was also featured in the sequel, “The Emperor’s New Groove II” and reprised the role in the popular Saturday morning animated series “The Emperor’s New School” for which she received a 2007 and 2008 Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program and a 2007 and 2008 Annie Award for Best Vocal Performance in an Animated Television Production.

Miss Kitt died on December 25, 2008 and is survived by her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, and four grandchildren.

Don’t miss announcements from Hank Williams of upcoming performances from former Suga’ guests in our “On The Bandstand” segment, which you can also catch on our blog on Sunday.

Produced, engineered, edited, and hosted by Joyce Jones.

Web Extras

Watch a teaser of Rene Marie sing “I Wanna Be Evil” from her new albun:



And now watch Eartha herself: