I am still recovering from the sonic & social whirl of this past week in Connecticut where we were engaged in mounting the #DavidBowie & #Prince memorial conference “Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign,” organized by my dear friend & Yale University scholar Dr. Daphne A. Brooks. A good deal to reflect upon from all I heard from my former rockcrit colleagues including Ann Powers of NPR Music & Michaelangelo Matos & Greil Marcus, as well as those of the Academy such as Tavia Nyong’o of Yale & Eric Lott of CUNY Graduate Center. I do appreciate the wide audience that my session with Sherae Rimpsey & Alan Light — Everybody Still Wants To Fly — garnered due to our being the lead-in to Solange Knowles’ keynote address. My take on Prince as Mystery Cult via the prism of what Harold Bloom has denunciated as “California Orphism” was interesting to some folks (smile). And my Texan bandmate KAR / Kimberly Robison kindly traveled up from the Hamilton Grange to support me in my presentation & also did some vital research at Yale on Emily West aka the Yellow Rose of Texas for an upcoming project we wish to mount – stay tuned!
I was also very sad to learn upon my arrival in New Haven that Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks was gone to Glory. A lot of flashing on my time spent on-and-off the Road that goes on Forever with the Allmans is surfacing & I am doing a lot of listening to my favorites among their compositions — particularly one of my 3 most treasured songs: “In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed.” So, more to come after a spell on what transpired last week…yet here’s two precious souvenirs of my time spent in New Haven — meeting one of the scions of the great Escovedo family of American music that has had a profound influence on me since I initially grew up in a colony of Aztlan, a Chicano barrio in Chocolate City; I am very much a follower as a singer-songwriter of Sheila E. & her uncle Alejandro Escovedo…& as a past film school graduate and lover of concert cinema, I have also been influenced by D.A. Pennebaker who made my beloved Monterey Pop. An honor all ’round to briefly share space with them…A’ho*

( Sheila E. & Kandia Crazy Horse of Cactus Rose @ Yale University last Friday night, New Haven, Connecticut )

( Kandia Crazy Horse of Cactus Rose & legendary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker @ Yale, after screening of his 1973 David Bowie documentary “Ziggy Stardust” )
February 2, 2017 | Categories: Live, Showout, Tourlife, Uncategorized | Tags: 1960s, 1970s, Afrofuturism, AfroNative, AlejandroEscovedo, AllmanBrothersBand, alternativespirituality, BettyDavis, BlackstarRisingandthePurpleReign, BurnedOverDistrict, ButchTrucks, CactusRose, CactusRoseBand, California, Camille, Connecticut, CosmicAmericanMusic, CosmicLadies, cosmogonies, DAPennebaker, DaphneBrooks, DavidBowie, DevonWilson, EdenAhbez, ElectricEden, electricity, ElectricLadies, England, Esquerita, FatherYod, GeorgeClinton, GlitterGlam, HerculineBarbin, HierosGamos, Hippies, JehovahsWitness, JoniMitchell, Kandia Crazy Horse, Karline, KarlMay, KimberlyRobison, Lebensreform, LisaColeman, LittleRichard, MetalHurlant, MidnightRider, MilleriteGreatDisappointment, MontereyPop, Mormonism, Mothership, Muses, Music, MysteryCult, NativeAmerican, News, Nightbirds, Oakland, PaisleyPark, PaisleyUnderground, Pleiades, Prince, religion, Romanticism, SacredAndrodyne, SeventhDayAdventist, SheilaE, SisterOfTheRoad, Skymama, SongbirdAquarian, SourceFamily, southernrock, Spiritualism, Spirituality, StevieNicks, SunRa, Technopagans, TheRoadGoesOnForever, Transcendentalism, transvocalizing, VisionaryState, WendyandLisa, WendyMelvoin, WhiteWingedDove, YaleUniversity, ZiggyStardust | Leave a comment
Beautiful poster art in my favorite color, by our brother-in-struggle Kyle Goen #kyledidthis

December 7, 2016 | Categories: Live, Red Road, Showout, Tourlife, Uncategorized | Tags: AbiodunOyewole, Activism, Art, Artists, ArtistsSpace, artivist, Black Snake Killas, BlackAtlantic, blackcontemporaryart, BlackHistory, BlackLivesMatter, BlackRockCoalition, CactusRose, CactusRoseBand, Country Music, CountryandWestern, CountryGirlsDoItBetter, DecolonizeThisPlace, DefendTheSacred, femalesingersongwriters, folk, FolkMusic, FolkRock, FreedomSongs, FreePalestine, grassrootsartists, Icons, IndependentArtists, IndianCountry, Indigenous, InMemoriam, IStandWithStandingRock, JeffMcLaughlin, Kandia Crazy Horse, Karline, KimberlyRobison, KyleGoen, MahinaMovement, Music, News, NoAIM, NoDAPL, outlaw country, Palestine, PeteSeeger, poetry, Protect The Sacred, Race, radicals, RadioFreeDixie, rap, RebelMusic, RebelMusicInTheHourOfChaos, RedRoad, RobFields, singersongwriter, SingOut, Sisterhood, Slavery, SlaveTrade, Solidarity, Songbird, Soul, South, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, StandingRockSiouxTribe, TheFutureIsFemale, TheLastPoets, Water Is Life, WaterNotOil, WaterProtectors | Leave a comment
Some of the great photography that’s come in from Afro-Native artist & milliner from Texas, Kimberly Robison / KAR. I look forward to performing with her here in NYC next month, as well as being involved with various actions on behalf of Indian Country. When I did the same march up Wickquasgeck back in early August with Brooke & Luis of Eagle & Condor Community Center, there were only 10 of us. So it was heartfelt & illuminating that so many have come to stand in solidarity with Standing Rock in the time since – A’ho*
#mniwiconi #IStandWithStandingRock #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

(With my fellow NYC artist Cheadah, upon our arrival @ 107th Street)
(In the sage smoke…)

(Kandia by Kimberly / KAR in my “Karen Dalton” hat)
November 10, 2016 | Categories: Showout, Uncategorized | Tags: Activism, Activist, Americana, Ancestors, Artists, Country, Kandia Crazy Horse, Karline, KimberlyRobison, Muses, Music, NativeAmerican, News, NYC, NYCPrayerMarchInSupportOfTheStandingRockSiouxNation, NYStandsWithStandingRock, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, StandingInSolidarityWithStandingRock, StandingRockSiouxTribe, Texas, Virginia | Leave a comment
We three Native American sisters & NYC artists, representing three Nations & both the Upper and Deep South, had a lovely, impromptu gathering down by the riverside of Hamilton Heights yesterday before the rains swept along the Hudson River. Surrounded by several circling & swooping hawks, we began a powerful conjure straight out of Hudson Canyon — look forward to us being involved with the recently-discovered Lenape burial mounds at 125th Street in Harlem, among other projects – A’ho* #KandiaCrazyHorse #TessReese #KimberlyRobison / #Karline #HawkMedicine
(Kandia Crazy Horse on the Hudson River, view of the Palisades, by Tess Reese, Choctaw)
(Karline x Kandia x Tess, by Kandia Crazy Horse)
(Stormy Sunday in Hudson Canyon by Kandia Crazy Horse)
October 31, 2016 | Categories: Live, Red Road, Showout, Tourlife, Uncategorized | Tags: Activism, Algonquin, Ancestors, Artists, Black, BlackAtlantic, blackcontemporaryart, BlackHistory, blackwomenartists, BrooklynCountry, BurialMounds, ContemporaryArt, EasternWoodlands, grassrootsartists, Harlem, HawkMedicine, Hawks, HolyWater, HudsonRiver, IndependentArtists, Indigenous, Jazz, Karline, KimberlyRobinson, Krowns, Lenape, LenniLenape, MamiWata, Millinery, Mississippi, Muses, Music, NativeAmerican, NativeAmericana, NYC, RedRoad, rock, RootsMusic, Soul, TessReese, Texas, TurtleIslandLiberation, Uati, Virginia, WeAreStillHere, WomenWarriors, WoodlandsIndians | Leave a comment