A listening event with Ben Kritikos, featuring jazz composer Charles Mingus's 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'.
A listening session, short presentation and an open discussion exploring the themes of Charles Mingus's 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady' and its historical context. The album was released during the Civil Rights movement, a time of radical Black American music and ideas of freedom and belonging in the cultural Cold War.
We will explore the record as a piece of music and as a material artefact that helps tell a story about how civic identities are formed. We will examine ideas about 'the nation', its founding myths, and what it means to be from somewhere. These questions are as relevant today as ever, in Scotland as in the US.
About the speaker
Ben Kritikos is a writer, broadcaster, and worker based in Glasgow, UK. He co-hosts the podcast 'Spaghetti for Brains', as well as writing and hosting the radio show 'Red White Blues: An Anthology of America's Music' for Radio Buena Vida, a community radio station based in Glasgow. He's provided voiceover for film, radio, and audiobooks, including the audiobook version of 'The Housing Monster'. He regularly publishes cultural histories through his newsletter 'Spaghetti for Brains' and elsewhere.
