Alex Rodríguez

Alex Rodriguez, producer and emcee:

This conversation was recorded between Howard Jordan (professor, activist, journalist, and lawyer) and Alex Rodríguez a couple of years ago. Jordan was and continues to be the Chair of the Behavioral & Social Sciences Department at Hostos Community College and Alex was enrolled in the Sound Engineering program. Today, Alex works at the Hostos Sound Studio and the rhythm of this share is as real as it comes. A South Bronx native, Alex is lyricist, an emcee, producer, and a full artist at heart. 

Jordan asks and each time Alex goes at it with sincere aplomb and a whole hearted explanation. He fills the gaps with context and personal history and makes his surroundings palpable with word. I’ve been thinking of him for several weeks, his cadence, the hoarseness/softness speed of his voice, and the crux of it-the why of the spoken word, its power and confusion, resonance and displacement, history and the story, tales of souls left heartless and beloved by others. The rest is ignorance and here’s a voice.

Sol

Here CODA XII: Gallery of photos | Book week in Puerto Rico.

There’s something about sincere closeness, familial love, and streets you know that simply linger. 

Sit, breathe, and wait a bit. Take your thoughts and imagine yourself abruptly being taken by the ankles as you become a pendulum swinging side-to-side with force. You surrender to the sway. It begins to slow down until the swinging comes to a full soft stop. You drop to a body of water. When you come up for air some of those people and streets, the closeness, are out there and its safe again. That was Puerto Rico last week.

A bounty of grace and love.

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Leadership succession in the Bronx arts and culture sphere is a thing to look at, write about, and discuss. The future does matter. This is a subject I’ll delve into in 2019. I’m pre-preparing my year. For now.

Oscar J. Rivera is an example of that tomorrow for EnFoco. Since 1974 EnFoco has supported visual and photographic artists of color in underserved communities. But, the borough is changing, leaders are aging, and the promise of these imperative spaces and projects need us and younger minds to carry out the next 40-years.

This was the undercurrent feeling I was left with after my convo with Oscar. Young, purposeful, real, he’s a man with a caring eye and heart. He travels from Brooklyn to the Bronx to make it to the office and is quickly becoming an inter-borough creative connector. Love him for it. December’s Nueva Luz photo journal is The Queer Issue with Oscar’s touch from beginning to end. To purchase or check it all out visit EnFoco’s website, and listen to us with perfect sound, here.

With gratitude for the Lenape Indians, original holders of Manhattan.

Sol

Announcements:

Alexa Rivera @ the Bronx Music Heritage Center 11-11

Trina Bardusco has a new blog!

View for Death on sale.

Episode 117 | Harvest Season |  Screening @ DOC NYC 11-13 and 11-15 IFC Center

“Harvest Season” is about caregivers. I said I would dedicate these weeks to caregivers and their stories. This is a short story about the storyteller of California wine country, as seen and told through the ones that care for the harvest year-in-year-out. Arduous work. Dedicated focus with knowledge of respect for the seasons. Out in the wine country, anything can happen. A crop is never assured, as is nothing in life really, but gusto, bravado, and the need and will to carry on.

In his latest documentary feature “Harvest Season,” Bernardo again unfolds a multilayered story that points at U.S. immigration laws, labor history, and American history. The nuances come out of the stories as if they were made to boil only they surface naturally because knowledge is passed down from generation; sacrifice is what it takes to make it in the land business, and an entire industry would not be able to subsist without immigrant labor.

In Bernardo’s stories, there is always a moral compass appearing without effort. It comes one second at a time. As the scenes pass, fractions of a seconds end up as large lapses of beats, reasons, and purpose. Such is “Harvest Season.”

Bernardo reaps what he has sowed, which is a lot of humanity, dignity, and history to makes us proud.

Sol

www.harvestseasonmovie.com

www.viewfordeath.com

The White Shirt Project is about courage. The portrait collection captures people from all walks of life in a white shirt but not before engaging in a heart-to-heart talk with José Ramón about vulnerability and courage.

Our conversation fits this Memorial Day weekend. The son, brother, and nephew of Veterans, José Ramón calls the wars his Puerto Rican family members fought in and describes his memory of the picture of him with one of his brothers that fought in Vietnam. 

Jose Ramón is all courage and he took me with him. We go deep and sincere in this talk that touches on issues of PTSD, trauma, loss, caregiving and agreeing that recognizing ourselves and others as brethren is a matter of giving oneself with honesty, respect, and love.

Amen,

Sol

Mónica Félix is living life to the fullest. Young at heart, thoughtful, daring, she launches forward. There’s a certainty about her that I can’t put in words, but she has it. A hold of the whole. Blonde and green-eyed she’s often told she doesn’t look Puerto Rican, but she is, from Cayey. Mónica shares about being puertorriqueña now and living for her love of photography.

An intimate portrait with a free spirit. Dignity is all over the place.

A Puerto Rico Women’s Shelter Provides a Post-Storm Lifeline by Ivelisse Rivera Quiñones and Mónica Félix for the Village Voice.

Be with the day,

Sol

Who can put a price on memories? Pictures are precious for this very reason I suppose. We hold on to moments of moments. It is one of the ways in which we can capture time. In this is the age of citizen journalism and citizen photography, who and what is the real deal? Amateurs and Pros meet at junctures of action and practice. There is so much to see. How it turns out is that most famous images are credited to men photographers. But as photography experts and buffs know, women photographers have also captured history. This is for them...

The article, The Women Who Covered Vietnam by Elizabeth Becker immediately made me think of Verónica Sanchis Bencomo, founder of Foto Féminas, a platform exclusively devoted to showcasing Latin American women photographers. Since its launch, Foto Féminas features one photographer a month. Today, Foto Féminas is a showcase platform and a library. The collection is named after Maria Cristina Orive, a pivotal figure in Latin American photojournalism from Guatemala, who passed away this September. Orive, alongside legendary Argentinian photographer Sara Facio founded La Azotea one of the most respected oldest photography publishing houses in Latin America.

This month’s featured photographer is Gabriela Rivera Lucero. A beast. And I mean wonderful and good. The work is literally beastly, it’s called Bestiario. Check it out. The proposal is not for the faint of heart, but it is real and timely and some of the most exciting work I’ve seen in some time.

Foto Féminas has an important role and we have Veronica thank. The collective voices of these women photographers are telling the story of Latin America with bravery and not a hint of shyness. Fierce.

Sol