Good morning. It's Friday. Today we'll preview a symposium on the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. We'll also find out why more than 500 tuba players are expected to gather in Rockefeller Center on Sunday.
The writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin said his mission was to "bear witness to the truth," and he did so in ways that were impassioned, influential and enduring. Baldwin will be the subject of a symposium at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday where writers and artists will talk about his legacy. Here is a preview from my colleague Melissa Guerrero, who spoke with some of them: In the 1980s, as a sophomore majoring in art history and African American studies at Smith College, Thelma Golden encountered one professor who was different from the others — "one, truly, of the first living artists that I had the occasion to be able to have a sustained engagement with," she said. She credits her work with that professor in an English seminar as a driving force in her approach to her work as the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. That professor was the writer, activist and son of Harlem himself, James Baldwin. Golden's connection to Baldwin is what will take her to the symposium at the Brooklyn Museum. The event will celebrate the publication of "God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin," featuring essays by the writer and critic Hilton Als, the filmmaker Barry Jenkins and the novelist Jamaica Kincaid, among others. The symposium, like the book, will honor Baldwin's legacy by exploring the many facets of his identity and interests. The talks will cover the politics of queer life, past and present, in relation to Baldwin, who died in 1987. There will also be discussions of his impact on a group of visual artists, and a performance of "The Gospel of James Baldwin" by the singer and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello. Als, who edited "God Made My Face," said that he wanted an event for Baldwin "that celebrates the life with life." So what does it look like to set aside the folklore ascribed to a cultural figure like Baldwin? For Stephen Best, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who contributed to the book, it means encouraging people to deepen their understanding of Baldwin. In making his point, he quoted the writer Teju Cole describing a characterization of Baldwin in the social media era as "the go-to quote factory of those who are woke." "While that's great and while that actually also may even introduce a whole new generation to him, he's not just his quotes," Best said. "He warrants immersion, coming at him from all different angles." He said his earliest memory of engaging with Baldwin's work was an undergraduate English seminar in the late '80s called "Baldwin, Baraka and Reed."
"Of the three figures in that class, he's the one I'm still teaching regularly," he said. (The others were Amiri Baraka, who died in 2014, and Ishmael Reed.) Daphne Brooks, who also contributed to the book and is a professor at Yale University, said she had recognized Baldwin's "symbolic value" before reading any of his work. "As a child of the post-civil-rights era, I grew up with a very vivid kind of recognition of his impact on law and Black freedom-struggle politics," she said. For years, her father, a public school administrator and educator, kept a first-edition copy of Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" on his night stand. "Read James Baldwin in concert with others," she said. "Use his work as a way to forge felt connections, to build community, to imagine what it would be like to call forth on a daily basis with other human beings as though you're in a Cutting Room jazz ensemble circle."
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Michael Salzman was in junior high school in 1974 when one of his teachers said: "I went to this thing. You probably would have enjoyed it." The "thing" was a noisy, once-a-year spectacle in Rockefeller Center that is known as Tuba Christmas. Salzman, a tuba player in the school band, went the following year, has gone every year since and is now the master of ceremonies. He expects to welcome more than 500 tuba players who will huff and puff their way through Christmas carols beginning at 3 p.m. on Sunday. The performance will be the 50th Tuba Christmas. Some of the players will have lugged their tubas a long way by the time they play the first note on Sunday. Salzman said he had heard from an 82-year-old tuba player in South Dakota who was planning to drive to New York for Tuba Christmas. She asked if she could sit down while she played. Salzman said he had assured her, "If you can get to New York, we can find you a chair." Tuba Christmas is the brainchild of Harvey Phillips, who was variously described as the Heifetz, the Horowitz or the Segovia of the tuba. He wanted the tuba to be seen as more than the Rodney Dangerfield of instruments — he wanted it taken seriously, and he commissioned or inspired more than 200 pieces for it. Phillips also did whatever was necessary to get composers' juices flowing. He gave the composer Vincent Persichetti a case of Beefeater gin; Persichetti delivered a serenade for solo tuba. Phillips dreamed up Tuba Christmas to remember William Bell, who had been the principal tubist in the John Philip Sousa band when he was 19 and later played in the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini and in the New York Philharmonic. Phillips thought that the end-of-year holidays would be an appropriate time, because Bell had been born on Christmas Day. Phillips "called over to Rockefeller Center and explained what he wanted to do, to bring in hundreds of tuba players," Salzman said. "They thought he was nuts. He was turned down immediately. But then he said: 'If you don't mind, I'm going to give you the personal numbers of a few colleagues. They will vouch for me.'" Phillips passed along the unlisted numbers of Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski and Andre Kostelanetz. Salzman said that someone from Rockefeller Center soon called back and told Phillips: "They said we should let you do whatever you want. It'll be great." The forecast for Sunday is for rain at times in the afternoon, but Salzman is undaunted. "We have done it in pouring rain, we have done it in sleet, we have done it in minus-3-degree weather, we have done it in 65-degree weather," he said. "Whatever the weather gods give us, it doesn't matter. We're playing Christmas carols." METROPOLITAN DIARY Whistle regretDear Diary: When the whistle seller passes — Richard Schiffman Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: Honoring James Baldwin as more than a legend
December 08, 2023
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