June 24, 2020

Midweek Boosts, With a Guest Appearance by Cornel West

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A drumroll of quick ones:

• The Village Vanguard is up and running with a powerful livestream series that continues Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, featuring the exhilarating sounds of bassist Joe Martin, saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Kevin Hays, and drummer Nasheet Waits. Visit VillageVanguard.com for tickets and teasers.

• Louis Armstrong, as Gary Giddins said, did “what only the greatest artists are prepared to do—show the world to itself in a new light.” And the photographer Chris Barham did likewise, showing Armstrong to the world in a set of iconic photos of the jazz legend on the front steps of his Queens home with kids in the neighborhood 50 years ago this week. Barham died Monday at the age of 87, but his inspiring images live on.

• Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, whose music I can’t stop boasting about—for god’s sake listen to his tensely erupting, lucidly floating sound on “Aftermath” and “Threnody” with Vijay Iyer—is on a hot streak. Mahanthappa’s latest, Hero Trio, is bound to be album of the year. If I were still organizing the old Pazz & Jop poll at the Village Voice (you reading this, Bob and Chuck? Send a flare to recharge@motherjones.com), Hero Trio would be runaway first, and I’d ballot-stuff, electioneer, whatever it took. Sample and sample, with Charlie Parker darting in.

• In case you missed Arturo O’Farrill’s good news, his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra’s Four Questions features Cornel West’s narration and poetic justice on the title track, with a “caravan of love—or what Coltrane called A Love Supreme.” Dr. West, you are supremely welcome at recharge@motherjones.com.

• Additional stamina from the exceptional tenor saxophonist Jorge Continentino on “De Volta à Festa (Back to the Party),” from drummer Vanderlei Pereira’s new Vision for Rhythm. “Party” indeed, if you can, pandemic and all.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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