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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 2016)
December 21, 2016 The Skanner Page 11 Bids & Classifi ed Advertising deadlines 12:00 Noon Monday Hours: Monday - Friday 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 13th cont’d from pg 7 ishment for a crime.” The movie’s basic thesis is that, aft er the Civil War, racists seized on that loophole to keep the black masses in chains. The fi lm features in- terviews with an array of luminaries, including Angela Davis, Senator Cory Booker, Dr. Henry Louis Gates and attor- ney Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcera- tion in the Age of Color- blindness.” Inter alia, “13th” blames Legend cont’d from pg 7 one we’d love to collabo- rate with. My producing partner [Mike Jackson] suggested we connect with him very early on, aft er we saw a screener of “Whiplash.” We fi nally got a chance to sit down and discuss something creative when he was in the process of preparing to shoot “La La Land.” The script was fi n- ished, and they were al- ready in talks with Ryan and Emma to star in it. Damien wanted to see if we were interested in getting involved. He was originally thinking in terms of executive pro- ducing and in terms of the music for the charac- ter, Keith, and his band, The Messengers. But eventually, he asked me if I wanted to play Keith. I said, “Yeah, let’s do it!” I hadn’t done anything like it before. I hadn’t had a major speaking role in a fi lm before. But I guess he felt that I could pull it off , because the charac- ter had some similarities to my own background as a musician. Damien thought I could relate to the character, and I felt the same way. So, it made sense for me to do it, since I was already a fan of his work. And then, when I found out that Ryan and Emma had come aboard, it seemed like a no-brainer for us to get involved. KW: Early in your ca- reer, were you a musical purist like Sebastian, who had a reverence for the classics? JL: No, I never looked at myself as a purist in the sense of simply wanting to recreate old music that I’d grown up listening to. I never struggled with that conundrum. But I think every artist is in- fl uenced by certain tradi- D.W. Griffi th’s “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) for res- urrecting the Ku Klux Klan by demonizing Black males. It goes on to point out that more than 300 Klansmen were elected delegates to the “ To place your ad, email advertising@theskanner.com or go to www.TheSkanner.com and click on the “Ads” menu icans, observing that “Virtually no one who is White understands the challenge of being Black in America.” And former Green Czar Van Jones, who served in the Obama administration, asks a ‘Virtually no one who is white understands the chal- lenge of being black in Amer- ica’ —Newt Gingrich 1924 Democratic Nation- al Convention. Though an arch-con- servative, Newt Gingrich adopts a sympathetic posture regarding the plight of African Amer- tions and the artists they grew up listening to. For Taylor Swift , it was coun- try music. For me, it was gospel and soul. Other artists grew up listening to folk, classic rock or whatever else it was for them. But no matter what your early infl uences are, you have to decide how much you’re just recreating the feelings those artists gave you, recreating their styles, or doing something fresh and new that’s infl u- enced by them. I think we all deal with that. There’s always the push and pull in our careers of how much we go traditional and how much we try to change it up and do something new. KW: Aft er watching the fi lm, I was surprised to see that you have so few acting credits, be- cause you did a phenom- enal job. JL: Thank you! I’d spent my whole career focused on music. Acting wasn’t something I was really pursuing, even though we were doing fi lm and TV behind the camera as producers, because mu- sic takes up so much of my creative energy. But I couldn’t pass up the op- portunity to work with such great people. KW: Editor/Legist Pa- tricia Turnier says: Like many people, I think that you are a great artist and I consider you like the young Stevie Won- der. I saw you in Mon- treal when you opened for Alicia Keys on one of her tours. Given that your new fi lm is about jazz, please name a few of your favorite jazz mu- sicians. JL: Honestly, I don’t consider myself much of a jazz afi cionado. When I was growing up, my dad used to play a lot of vo- calists like Billie Holiday, Ella [Fitzgerald], Sarah very thought-provoking question, namely: “Why is the Black community so weak in defending it- self?” Part of the answer is re- vealed in the profi t-max- Vaughan, Nancy Wilson and Nat King Cole. So, I grew up loving some of the great standards sing- ers and jazz vocalists. Also Nina Simone, who cut across a few diff erent genres. Those are a few of my bigger infl uences, but i wouldn’t say I was much of a jazz expert. KW: I’d like to congrat- ulate you on your new album, “Darkness and Light,” which I’ve been imizing agenda of the Corrections Corporation of America, a company which has successfully lobbied to expand and privatize the prison in- dustry. The upshot is that today there are millions of Blacks behind bars, a sad refl ection of the reali- ty that a defendant is way better off in the courts being rich and guilty than poor and innocent. The incendiary ex- pose’ closes with Jones asserting that the Black Lives Matter movement “is not a stoppable phe- nomenon” because it’s fundamentally about reshaping the country’s understanding of human listening to. It’s terrifi c! JL: Thank you. I’m re- ally proud of it. It’s fun- ny being in “La La Land” mode today, since I’ve been in Darkness and Light mode for the past month, and I’ll be back into it for the next year or so. It’s exciting to sup- port this really beautiful fi lm and to have a new al- bum out at the same time. Read the rest of this interview at TheSkanner.com dignity. It’ll certainly be in- teresting to see how things shake out, given the ascension of Donald Trump, who has taken the position that “All lives matter” while declaring himself the law-and-or- der president-elect. Excellent Unrated Running time: 100 min- utes Distributor: Netfl ix STREETCAR SAFETY & RISK OFFICER I SALARY: $5,830.00 - $7,784.00 Monthly CLOSING DATE: 01/13/17 04:30 PM THE POSITION: The Streetcar Safety & Risk Officer I works with Oper- ations and Maintenance managers, supervisors, and staff to ensure safe- ty program requirements are met. The Streetcar Risk and Safety Officer will develop, recom- mend, and implement safety plans and policies needed to maintain a safety-fi rst working envi- ronment for employees and a safe and secure public transit system for customers. For more information or to apply, please visit www.portlan- doregon.gov/jobs. DELIVERY DRIVER Weekly North Port- land newspaper is seeking a driver to distribute the week- ly publication in the Metro Portland and Greater Vancouver areas as well as other duties. Must be dependable and possess a valid driv- er’s license with no previous accident or moving citation and may have to submit to a random drug test. Contact (503) 285.5555. 12-28-16 Community Business Directory ADVERTISING 12-21-16 We honor the many accomplishments of African Americans. 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