Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL from Dr. Diane Retallack and The Eugene Concert Choir is an ode to hope in the face of injustice. This Navona Records release showcases music by Black composers that shed light on the Black experience including two choral masterworks: Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson and the world premiere recording of Dr. Undine Smith Moore’s oratorio Scenes from the Life of a Martyr.

Blackity Black Black Is Beautiful is the very first solo record by Fay Victor, whose 30-year-long music career has covered everything from House, New Music, Jazz (Blues) and Free Improvisation. Her deep history with dance music, her genreless output, and her lived experience as a Black woman in the world shaped the brand new process she used to create this prismatic album which touches on all the decades of her life like diary snapshots. It’s a mesmerizing collection of composed work that could only be made by an extraordinary improviser.

Art of Noise (also The Art of Noise) were an English avant-garde synth-pop group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn and music journalist Paul Morley. The group had international Top 20 hits with "Kiss" and the instrumental "Peter Gunn", which won a 1986 Grammy Award. The group's mostly instrumental compositions were novel melodic sound collages based on digital sampler technology, which was new at the time. Inspired by turn-of-the-20th-century revolutions in music, the Art of Noise were initially packaged as a faceless anti- or non-group, blurring the distinction between the art and its creators. Collection includes: (Who's Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! (1984); In Visible Silence (1986); In No Sense? Nonsense! (1987); Below The Waste (1989); The Ambient Collection (1990); The FON Mixes (1991); The Seduction Of Claude Debussy (1999).

"…and when the darkness turns to blue, my curse is sending me back down to the underworld (my universe). I don`t do sunrises anymore, gonna stay in the dark `cause black is beautiful!"

The Soul Music label's extensive Nancy Wilson reissue series continues with the singer's 20th and 21st albums for the Capitol label: The Sound of Nancy Wilson and Nancy. The first of the two, released in 1968, was led by the #24 Billboard R&B single "Peace of Mind" and a powerful ballad finale in "Black Is Beautiful." The latter, a more stylistically varied album released in 1969, boasts the #44 R&B single "You'd Better Go" and the brisk pop of "In a Long White Room." Both sets were produced by David Cavanaugh with arranging and conducting from Jimmy Jones. This is another loving, fan-pleasing release of long-out-of-print Wilson titles.

Black Is Beautiful is an album by singer Della Reese, released in 1970 by Avco Embassy Records.