MUSIC
The Queen of Soul
After forty years in the business, soul singer Bettye Lavette is finally getting the attention she deserves. Her 2003 release, A Woman Like Me, helped Lavette win the W.C. Handy Award in
2004 for Comeback Blues Album of the Year, as well as the Living Blues
critic pick as Best Female Blues Artist of 2004. And her latest CD, Scene of the Crime debuted at the number one spot on Billboard’s Top Blues Album chart in the first week of its release.
7 & 9 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet, Downtown Minneapolis, 612-332-1010, $30 & $22.
Tuesday Night Music Series for Free Improvisation
George Cartwright has a reputation as one of the great unsung composers in modern jazz and a treasure in the Minnesota music scene. Rather proficient as of late, his Gloryland Ponycat ensemble (featuring Fog’s Andrew Broder) recently graced the Cedar’s stage with a meticulous set of fiery free jazz, subtle micro-tonal compositions, and rock-inspired dirges. He’s also released a new CD that is getting rave reviews. For the unfamiliar, Cartwright’s brand of avant-garde jazz is in a lineage beginning with Ornette Coleman — which is to say that his noise is passionate, intense, and heady. Here at the Acadia — as part of the Tuesday night series for free and improvised music — he is scaling back and performing as a duo with Davu Seru on percussion. Expect this performance to be Cartwright at his most experimental and unhinged. Also performing is Gerald Prokop on circuit-bent keyboard and 100% Certified. You won’t find a more far-out evening of music on a Tuesday. —Christopher Hontos
8 p.m., Acadia Cafe, 1931 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-874-8702; $3.
BOOKS & AUTHORS
The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon
Well, it’s certainly not the ’60s anymore, and perhaps we’ve lost a fair amount of our rebellion, but I have to believe the ideals still exist… somewhere. Right here in our backyard, or rather at Macalester College, one woman struggles to keep the ideals alive. "In Framing the Black Panthers, cultural historian Jane Rhodes examines the extraordinary staying power of the Panthers in the American imagination by probing their relationship to the media. Rhodes argues that once the media and pop culture latched onto the small, militant group, the Panthers became adept at exploiting and manipulating this coverage–through pamphlets, buttons, posters, ubiquitous press appearances, and photo ops–pioneering a sophisticated version of mass media activism. Paradoxically, the news media participated in the government campaign to eradicate the Panthers while simultaneously elevating them to a celebrity status that remains long after their demise."
7:30 p.m., Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611.
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