By Harlem World Magazine In the heart of the vibrant 1930s, a constellation of brilliant minds sparked an artistic movement that transcended paint on canvas. The Harlem Artists Guild, a visionary African-American collective founded by leaders, legends, and trailblazers such as Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, Elba Lightfoot, and the bibliophile virtuoso Arthur Schomburg, left an…
Happy Labor Day, y’all! It is no toil for me to offer up another playlist on this holiday Monday.
After June’s AfroBowie collection, our editor-in-chief, Lori Lakin Hutcherson, suggested a few more in a series of collections of rock musicians inspired by and in collaboration with Black artists.
So here is the second offering: AfroZeppelin. While David Bowie championed and collaborated with Black music-makers throughout his long career, Led Zeppelin’s connections were not as overt.
Outselling the Beatles and toppling them as icons of a new era of rock and roll, Zeppelin was the perfect combo of the Delta blues, London’s swinging scene and the myriad of cultural influences.
The influence of the street-tough Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf taught them much about swinging boogie. Over the decades many of their famous riffs and lyrics would come under fire. The allegations have brought several lawsuits as well, most of them settled out of court discreetly.
In the case of “Whole Lotta Love”, the song credits were later amended to include Willie Dixon, who claimed Robert Plant used his lyrics from “You Need Love”.
“The Lemon Song” is an expansion of a musical phrase featured in Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues”.
I’ve gathered many of the songs covered and referenced by Led Zeppelin, and their own versions of said tracks. Of course, they have been covered many times themselves.
I’ve included Zeppelin covers by Mary J. Blige, Lizz Wright, and Stanley Jordan. You’ll also find many classic cuts that feature Led Zeppelin samples too.
Here’s Beyoncé, Ice T, Jurassic 5, D12, Dr. Dre, Beastie Boys and many others.
This collection of great tracks stands as another example that no artist creates in a vacuum. Whether the influences are readily acknowledged, each creator makes offerings informed by what came before.
Do enjoy! Until next month! Stay safe, sane, and kind.
Amidst a news cycle that now routinely features wildfires, former president indictments, and extreme weather events, the world is grappling with the resurgence of COVID-19 as a new and concerning variant, BA.2.86, emerges. This variant, informally dubbed “Pirola,” has ignited alarm among public health experts due to its substantial spike protein mutations.
Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases specialist at Yale Medicine, warned that Pirola exhibits over 30 spike protein mutations compared to the previously dominant XBB.1.5 variant in the United States. The spike protein is critical for the virus’s entry into human cells, and such a high number of mutations raises red flags. In an online Yale Medicine article, Dr. Roberts compared the mutation count to the shift from the Delta to the Omicron variant in 2021, which caused a significant surge in cases due to its immune evasion capabilities.
What’s particularly concerning is that Pirola has been detected in at least six countries, and these cases appear unrelated. Experts said that suggests undetected community transmission and international spread, sparking concerns of a potential resurgence. According to medical experts, BA.2.86 is a designated variant of Omicron, a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19. BA.2.86 stems from BA.2, a previously circulating Omicron subvariant. The variant was first identified in Denmark in late July and made its way to the United States in August. Knowing that cases aren’t linked indicates broader circulation, significantly as COVID-19 surveillance has waned, medical experts asserted.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that current COVID-19 tests and medications, such as Paxlovid, Veklury, and Lagevrio, seem effective against Pirola. However, Pirola may be more adept at infecting individuals who have had COVID-19 or have been vaccinated. There isn’t any current evidence that it causes more severe illness.
The increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. is attributed to XBB lineage viruses rather than Pirola. The multitude of mutations in Pirola raises concerns about its potential to bypass immunity from natural infection or vaccination.
Dr. Roberts emphasized that ongoing studies would reveal the true nature of Pirola’s threat. The unprecedented number of mutations in Pirola is reminiscent of significant shifts seen in other respiratory viruses, such as the 2009 swine flu. However, he noted that these variants sometimes fade away without causing a significant impact.
The critical question now is whether Pirola will follow the explosive growth pattern of Omicron or fade away, as everyone hopes. As of August 30, the CDC has identified Pirola in at least four U.S. states through samples from individuals or wastewater.
Some regions have reinstated mask mandates in response to the spike in COVID-19 cases. Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, is among the institutions requiring masks in clinical areas to protect patients and staff. The CDC reports a nearly 19% increase in weekly new COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S., marking the sixth consecutive week of rising admissions.
The arrival of new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax in mid-September is expected to offer robust protection against variants. Until then, experts stress that masking remains a crucial tool for safeguarding against COVID-19, even for individuals with normal risk levels, depending on their location and contacts.
Dr. Stephen Thomas of the Upstate Medical University in Syracuse told NPR that the facility has reverted to mandating masks.
“We wanted to, No. 1, protect our patients, and, No. 2, protect the men and women who work in our facility, and take care of them,” Thomas told NPR. “So, we implemented universal masking for staff, visitors, and patients only in clinical areas. So, we’re a university. We’re large. We have a lot of non-clinical regions. Universal masking is not being mandated in non-clinical areas.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Coco Gauff is the first American teen since Serena Williams more than two decades ago to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals two years in a row, so the 19-year-old from Florida knows her way out of trouble on a tennis court.
As the second set slipped away against Caroline Wozniacki in the fourth round Sunday at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff needed a chance to think things through after handing over a break with a pair of double-faults and a stumble that left her doing the splits.
So Gauff turned in the direction of the near-constant chatter coming from Brad Gilbert, one of her two coaches sitting in a front-row seat, and said, “Please stop.” A couple of minutes later, Gauff said, “Stop talking.”
That was while Wozniacki was grabbing four consecutive games to go up a break in the third set. And then, just as the match seemed to be slipping away thanks in part to a slew of unforced errors, Gauff straightened out her strokes and pulled way. She collected the last six games for a 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 victory over Wozniacki, the 33-year-old mother of two who recently came out of retirement.
“I was getting frustrated. It wasn’t really directed at him. It was just that I needed to reset,” the sixth-seeded Gauff said. “In that moment, I just didn’t want to hear anything. I just wanted to think about what I was doing.”
Djokovic faces No. 9 Taylor Fritz of the U.S. on Tuesday. It’ll be Djokovic’s 13th quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows, and Fritz’s first.
Gauff, whose best showing at a major was reaching the final at the 2022 French Open before losing to Swiatek, has now won 15 of her past 16 matches.
That run follows a first-round exit at Wimbledon in July and includes the two biggest titles of her career, at the DC Open and in Cincinnati. It also coincides with the additions of Pere Riba as her full-time coach and Gilbert in a role that’s been described as a temporary consultant.
TV microphones have been picking up Gilbert repeatedly offering his thoughts to Gauff during matches over the past week.
Against Wozniacki, the 2018 Australian Open champion and twice the runner-up in New York, Gauff was trying to find the right balance between being the aggressor (what she wanted) and not going for too much (what Gilbert wanted).
Gilbert’s “scouting reports are quite accurate,” Gauff said. “Sometimes you have to change things up. Today I had to change things up.”
It was the hottest day of the event so far, with the temperature reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius), and Gauff kept missing the mark in the second set, to the tune of 22 unforced errors. But she cleaned that up considerably down the stretch, with just eight miscues in the last set. Also key in the third: Gauff compiled an 11-2 edge in winners.
“She’s always been a great athlete. She’s always had the backhand, the serve, the fighting spirit,” Wozniacki said. “I feel like right now, it’s all kind of coming together for her.”
In the third set, with the playing surface covered in shadows, Wozniacki told chair umpire Louise Azemar Engzell it was difficult to see the ball and requested that the stadium lights be turned on.
“I would really appreciate it,” Wozniacki said.
Didn’t happen.
“She’s back and it’s like she never left,” Gauff said, “To be out here on the court with her today was an honor.”
Another women’s quarterfinal matchup will be No. 10 Karolina Muchova against No. 30 Sorana Cirstea.
There is guaranteed to be at least one American man in the semifinals for the second year in a row. That’s because No. 10 Frances Tiafoe, who got to that stage 12 months ago, and unseeded Ben Shelton set up a quarterfinal meeting with wins Sunday.
Fritz made it three men from the United States in the quarterfinals — the most since Andre Agassi, James Blake and Robby Ginepri got there in 2005 — by overwhelming Swiss qualifier Dominic Stricker 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-4.
In the day’s first match in Ashe, the 20-year-old Shelton hit a pair of aces at 149 mph (240 kph) — the fastest by anyone all tournament — in a single game and earned a debut trip to the quarterfinals at Flushing Meadows by eliminating No. 14 Tommy Paul 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.
When the match ended, the muscle-shirt-wearing Shelton flexed his left biceps while standing under the section of seats where his father, a former touring pro who now coaches Ben, mother and sister were.
“Straight adrenaline,” Shelton said about those big lefty serves.
They were the kids most disrupted by the pandemic, the ones who were still learning to write their names and tie their shoes when schools shut down in the spring of 2020.
Now, they’re the big kids at elementary schools across the United States. Many still need profound help overcoming the effects of the pandemic.
To catch up, schools have deployed a wide range of strategies. And among some incoming fourth-graders, there are encouraging signs of gains. But as this generation progresses, many will need extra reading support that schools are not as accustomed to providing for older students.
Beyond third grade, fewer teachers each year know how to help students who are lacking key foundational reading skills, said Elizabeth Albro, an executive at the U.S. Department of Education’s independent research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.
Nationally, students suffered deep learning setbacks in reading and math during the pandemic. Last year’s third-graders, the kids who were in kindergarten when the pandemic started, lost more ground in reading than kids in older grades and were slower to catch up. With federal pandemic relief money, school systems added class time, brought on tutors, trained teachers in phonics instruction and found other ways to offer extra support to struggling readers.
But even after several years of recovery, an analysis of last year’s test scores by NWEA found that the average student would need the equivalent of 4.1 additional months of instruction to catch up to pre-COVID reading levels.
The one bright spot was for incoming fourth-graders, who made above-average gains and would need about two months of additional reading instruction to catch up. Karyn Lewis, who leads a team of education policy researchers at NWEA, described them as “a little bit less worse off.”
The school system in Niagara Falls, New York, is seeing similar results, said Marcia Capone, the district’s assessment administrator. The district brought on additional reading specialists, but Capone said it will take time to bring struggling students up to speed.
“I do not believe it’s hopeless, but it’s not something that’s going to occur in, say, three years’ time,” Capone said.
The problem for children who don’t master reading by third grade: School becomes that much harder in later grades, as reading becomes the foundation for everything else.
Schools have plenty of experience with older students who struggle. Even before the pandemic, only about a third of fourth graders scored as proficient in reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report card.”
But the pandemic made it worse, particularly for low-income students and kids of color.
So some schools are targeting some upper-grade students with the “ science of reading,” a push to embrace research-backed strategies for reading based on phonics. Many new laws endorsing the phonics-based approach target students beyond third grade, according to a July report from the nonpartisan Albert Shanker Institute.
In Virginia, for instance, a law signed in March mandates extra help for struggling readers through eighth grade. It is one of the most aggressive efforts yet.
“There’s an implicit recognition,” wrote the authors of the Shanker report, “that reading improvement needs to address a greater span of grades, and that reading difficulties do not necessarily end in 3rd grade.”
That will require a major shift. Historically, phonics and help decoding words have gradually disappeared in the upper grades.
Most English teachers at that level are no more prepared to teach a student to read than a math teacher would be, said Miah Daughtery, who advocates for effective literacy instruction for the NWEA research organization.
“They’re prepared to teach text,” she said. “They’re prepared to teach literature, to analyze ideas, craft, story structure, make connections.”
The federal pandemic relief money that bolstered many schools’ academic recovery efforts soon will run out, leaving some experts less optimistic.
“We’re past the point where we’re likely to see a quick rebound,” said Dan Goldhaber, of the American Institutes for Research.
Teachers are reporting it is taking more time to get through material, according to Tonya Perry, the vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Some school systems are turning to programs that break grade-level subject matter down into a variety of reading levels, so strong and weak readers can still learn the concepts, she said.
“Now we have to spend more time building the foundation for what we’re asking students to do,” she said.
Early in the pandemic, some students repeated a grade. But that was only a short-term solution, often taken reluctantly because of concerns about the effect on kids’ social lives and academic futures. By last year, grade retention numbers were trending downward again.
One thing teachers can do is rely less on silent reading in class, and instead have small group activities in which strong and weak readers can be paired together, Daughtery said.
Lewis, of the NWEA, said the takeaway should not be that the COVID kids are beyond help.
“The message has to be: We’re doing the right things. We’re just not doing enough of it,” she said. “And we need to amp up and certainly not take our foot off the gas pedal anytime soon.”
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Associated Press writers Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, and Bianca Vázquez Toness in Boston contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
