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Rihanna gives 1.67m to support LA domestic violence victims in lockdown

The singer joined with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to provide shelter, meals and counselling for families at risk in coronavirus pandemic

Rihanna has donated $2.1m (1.67m) to the Mayors Fund for Los Angeles to assist victims of domestic violence affected by the coronavirus lockdown. The singers Clara Lionel Foundation joined with Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey to donate matching sums to the drive. Their donations will cover 10 weeks of support, including shelter, meals and counselling for families experiencing domestic violence during the pandemic in greater Los Angeles.

Alyson Messenger, a managing staff lawyer with the Jenesse Center, a domestic violence organisation in South Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times last month that the lockdown was a worst-case scenario for anyone in an abusive relationship: Compound that with the fact that access to services is more difficult than ever.

UN secretary general Antnio Guterres tweeted on 6 April: Many women under lockdown for #COVID19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes. I urge all governments to put womens safety first as they respond to the pandemic.

In Chinas Hubei province, the centre of the initial outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in a single county, from 47 cases in February 2019 to 162 this year. A quarter of British domestic violence charities said that they could not effectively support abuse victims during lockdown owing to technical issues, inability to meet victims and staff sickness.

A statement announcing the donations by Rihanna a domestic abuse survivor and Dorsey said: Victims of domestic violence exist all over the world, so this is just the beginning.

Last month, Rihannas Clara Lionel Foundation previously joined with Jay-Zs Shawn Carter Foundation to donate $2m (1.59m) to support undocumented workers, prisoners, homeless people, the elderly and children of frontline health workers in Los Angeles and New York during the Covid-19 outbreak. She also donated personal protective equipment to healthcare providers in New York State, and gave $5m ($4m) to global organisations to protect healthcare workers and marginalised communities.

Her father, Ronald Fenty, has been recovering from coronavirus after spending 14 days inside the Paragon Isolation Center in Barbados. He told the Sun: I thought I was going to die. He said his daughter sent a ventilator to his home, which ultimately he did not need.

The 32-year old singer is the latest musician to mobilise in the effort to assist healthcare providers and people affected by coronavirus. Lady Gaga has curated the benefit concert One World: Together at Home featuring performances from such artists as Gaga, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Paul McCartney and Coldplays Chris Martin to be livestreamed globally and televised in the US on 18 April. The BBC will broadcast an adapted version the following day.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/10/rihanna-1-point-coronavirus-lockdown-donation-los-angeles-domestic-violence

Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Paul McCartney to play coronavirus benefit

One World: Together at Home, streamed live on 18 April, will support UN response fund

Lady Gaga is to curate One World: Together at Home, a live-streamed and televised benefit concert in support of the World Health Organizations Covid-19 solidarity response fund and in celebration of health workers around the world.

The lineup includes Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, Lizzo, J Balvin, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Burna Boy, Andrea Bocelli, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Elton John, John Legend, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban and Lang Lang.

The US talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert will host the event, which broadcasts live across the US television networks ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as being streamed online, at 8pm EST on 18 April.

BBC One will show an adapted version of the concert on 19 April, including exclusive performances from UK artists and interviews with frontline health workers. The details of the broadcast are yet to be announced.

Other celebrities expected to appear include David Beckham, Idris and Sabrina Elba, Kerry Washington, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Shah Rukh Khan and Sesame Street cast members.

The WHO and the social action platform Global Citizen have partnered to produce the event. The latters Together at Home series, launched last month, has featured performances from artists in isolation including Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello and Rufus Wainwright.

In a WHO press conference, Lady Gaga said she had helped to raise $35m (28m) for Global Citizen in the past week. She clarified that One World was not a fundraising telethon and would focus on entertainment and messages of solidarity, with philanthropists and businesses urged to donate to the Covid-19 solidarity response fund ahead of the event.

The WHOs general director, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said:We may have to be apart physically for a little while, but we can still come together virtually to enjoy great music. The One World: Together at Home concert represents a powerful show of solidarity against a common threat.

This article was amended on 6 April 2020. Lady Gaga stated that philanthropists and businesses were being urged to donate to the organisation, rather than fans as an earlier version said. This has been corrected.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/06/lady-gaga-billie-eilish-and-paul-mccartney-to-play-coronavirus-benefit

Seven-year-old Greek piano prodigy pens an ‘isolation waltz’

Stelios Kerasidis says his latest work is for people who suffer and isolate because of Covid-19

Move over Mozart, here comes Stelios Kerasidis. A seven-year-old Greek prodigy has penned an isolation waltz inspired by the pandemic.

The hypnotic, fugue-like melody has picked up more than 43,000 hits on YouTube since its launch last week.

Hi guys! Im Stelios. Lets be just a teeny bit more patient and we will soon be out swimming in the sea, he beams, perched on his piano stool, feet barely touching the floor. Im dedicating to you a piece of my own.

The work, his third composition, was written especially for people who suffer and those who isolate because of Covid-19, he adds.

Stelios Kerasidiss Isolation Waltz

Born in Athens in 2012 to Fotis and Agathe Kerasidis, both pianists who now teach him, Stelios first performed in public at the age of three.

In 2018 he played Chopins Waltz in A Minor at New Yorks Carnegie Hall, and last year he appeared at Londons Royal Albert Hall performing on Elton Johns famous red piano.

Stelios says his favourite pianist is the late Canadian Glenn Gould, best known for his technically demanding renditions of Bach variations.

The Greek has shown a flare for composing. His two earlier works were written for his sisters, Veronica and Anastasia, and like Isolation Waltz were met with critical acclaim.

Greece has been under lockdown for longer than most other European nations, the government having closed schools almost a month ago. Last week the government announced that swimming was also forbidden as the measures were ramped up.

The precautionary steps appear to be working: Greece has reported 79 deaths and fewer than 1,800 confirmed coronavirus cases, far fewer than some other countries.

Stelios, who is likely to be homebound for some time yet, has not hinted whether he has another composition up his sleeve.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/seven-year-old-greek-piano-prodigy-pens-an-isolation-waltz

Erased from utopia: the hidden history of LA’s black and brown resistance

In an extract from Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties, Mike Davis and Jon Wiener look past the sun and surf to a radical fight for equality and justice

In August 1965, thousands of young Black people in Watts set fire to the illusion that Los Angeles was a youth paradise.

Since the debut of the TV show 77 Sunset Stripin 1958, followed by the first of the Gidgetromance films in 1959 and then the Beach Boys Surfin USA in 1963, teenagers in the rest of the country had become intoxicated with images of the endless summer that supposedly defined adolescence in southern California.

Edited out of utopia was the existence of a rapidly growing population of more than 1 million people of African, Asian, and Mexican ancestry. Their kids were restricted to a handful of beaches; everywhere else, they risked arrest by local cops or beatings by white gangs. As a result, Black surfers were almost as rare in LA as unicorns. Economic opportunity was also rationed.

Surfers
Surfers in Malibu, 1965. Photograph: Jonathan Blair/Corbis via Getty Images

During the first half of the 60s, hundreds of brand-new college classrooms beckoned to white kids with an offer of free higher education, while factories and construction sites begged for more workers. But failing inner-city high schools with extreme dropout rates reduced the college admissions of Black and brown youth to a small trickle. Despite virtually full employment for whites, Black youth joblessness dramatically increased, as did the index of residential segregation. If these were truly golden years of opportunity for white teenagers, their counterparts in South Central and East LA faced bleak, ultimately unendurable futures.

But LAs streets and campuses in the 60s also provided stages for many other groups to assert demands for free speech, equality, peace and justice. Initially these protests tended to be one-issue campaigns, but the grinding forces of repression above all the Vietnam draft and the LAPD drew them together in formal and informal alliances.

Thus LGBT activists coordinated actions with youth activists in protest of police and sheriffs dragnets on Sunset Strip, in turn making Free Huey one of their demands. When Black and Chicano high school kids blew out their campuses in 196869, several thousand white students walked out in solidarity. A brutal LAPD attack on thousands of middle-class antiwar protesters at the Century Plaza Hotel in 1967 hastened the development of a biracial coalition supporting Tom Bradley, a liberal Black council member, in his crusade to wrest City Hall from rightwing populist Sam Yorty.

A
A air of Black Panther party buttons, one reading Free Huey in reference to Huey P Newton, co-founder of the party. Photograph: The Frent Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

In the same period, the antiwar movement joined hands with the Black Panthers to form Californias unique Peace and Freedom Party. There are many other examples. By 1968, as a result, the movement resembled the music of LA free jazz pianist Horace Tapscotts Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: simultaneous solos together with unified crescendos. Historians of 60s protests have rarely studied the reciprocal influences and interactions across such broad spectrum of constituencies, and these linkages are too often neglected in memoirs, but they provide a principal terrain of our analysis.

extract embed

The 60s in LA have obvious bookends. The year 1960 saw the appearance of social forces that would coalesce into the movements of the era, along with the emergence of a new agenda for social change, especially around what might be called the issue of issues: racial segregation. In LA, those developments overlapped with the beginning of the regime of Sam Yorty, elected mayor in 1961. 1973, on the other hand, marked not only the end of protest in the streets but also the defeat of Yorty and the advent of the efficient, pro-business administration of Tom Bradley.

There were also three important turning points that subdivide the long decade. 1963 was a rollercoaster year that witnessed the first: the rise and fall of the United Civil Rights Committee, the most important attempt to integrate housing, schools and jobs in LA through non-violent protest and negotiation. (Only Detroit produced a larger and more ambitious civil rights united front during what contemporaries called Birmingham Summer.) In California it brought passage of the states first Fair Housing Act repealed by referendum the following year in an outburst of white backlash.

1965, of course, saw the second turning point, the so-called Watts Riots. The third, 1969, began as a year of hope with a strong coalition of white liberals, Blacks and newly minted Chicanos supporting Bradley for mayor. He led the polls until election eve, when Yorty counterattacked with a vicious barrage of racist and red-baiting appeals to white voters. Bradleys defeat foreclosed, at least for the foreseeable future, any concessions to the citys minorities or liberal voters. Moreover, it was immediately followed by sinister campaigns, involving the FBI, the district attorneys office, and both the LAPD and LA county sheriffs, to destroy the Panthers, Brown Berets and other radical groups.

Joan
Joan Didion evoked a sense of dread in her essay collection The White Album. Photograph: Julian Wasser/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

This is the true context underlying the creeping sense of dread and imminent chaos famously evoked by Joan Didion in her 1979 essay collection, The White Album. If helter skelter was unleashed after 1970, the Manson gang were bit players compared to the institutions of law and order. For the past half century, a number of stereotypes have framed our recollections of this age of revolt, but the Los Angeles experience confounds most cliches. In the standard narrative, for instance, college students, organized as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Free Speech Movement (FSM) in Berkeley, were the principal social actors, and the great engine rooms of protest were found at huge public university campuses in places like Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, and Kent. (The exceptions, according to this narrative, were some historical Black colleges and Ivy League Columbia.)

In Los Angeles, however, it was junior and senior high schools that were the principal battlefields, and the majority of protesters were Black and brown. Indeed, as many as 20,000 inner-city teenagers and their white Westside allies participated in walkouts and demonstrations between 1967 and 1970. Members of college radical groups as well as the Black Panther party played significant roles as advisers to these protests, but the indigenous teenage leadership was most important. These struggles recruited hundreds of kids to groups like the Panthers and Brown Berets and gave birth to a unique high school New Left formation, the Red Tide.

The terrain of college protest in Los Angeles also differed from that of the mainstream. Of the two flagship local universities, the University of Southern California was a citadel of campus Republicanism, birthplace of Nixons so-called USC Mafia (and, as it turned out, the alma mater of several Watergate conspirators). UCLA, for its part, saw only episodic mass protests, most notably during Nixons invasion of Cambodia in spring 1970. The real homes of sustained student activism were the three inner-city community colleges (LA City College, Southwest College and East LA College), along with Cal State LA and Valley State (later Cal State, Northridge).

The latter was the site of a 196970 uprising by the Black Student Union and SDS that was quelled by police batons, mass arrests, and a staggering 1,730 felony charges against Black students: repression on a scale that rivaled or exceeded the more famous battles at San Francisco State.

The
The Black Panther minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver, addresses an estimated 7,500 students at UCLA in 1968. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Historians and political scientists have generally conceded that the one hundred or so ghetto insurrections of the 1960s should be regarded as genuine protests, but they have usually described them as leading to mere chaos and demoralization. Conventionally, rioters have been portrayed as the opposites of organizers and builders. This does not describe events in Los Angeles.

The 1965 explosion unified and energized a generation of young Black people, ended gang conflict for a number of years, and catalyzed the extraordinary Watts Renaissance, the citys most important arts and literary movement of the decade. Black Power became an aspiration shared by thousands, and in 1967 this grassroots unity found expression in the emergence of LAs Black Congress the more radical successor to the United Civil Rights Committee. It included SNCC, the Black Student Alliance, the Che-Lumumba Club of the Communist Party, the Black Panthers, and the powerful Us organization (or Organization Us) led by Ron Karenga. (The congress would later be destroyed by a violent conflict between Us and the Panthers, instigated and fueled by the FBIs secret Cointelpro program.)

Contests over public space were also extraordinarily important in Los Angeles. In part this was the legacy of earlier decades when the LAPDs notorious Red Squad had been the enforcer of the anti-union open shop doctrine, and when city hall supplied draconian anti-picketing and antifree speech ordinances. The 60s saw a renewal of this unsavory tradition.

Police
Police search African American youths in 1966. Photograph: Everett/Rex Shutterstock

The LAPD, aided by the LA county sheriffs, conducted an unending siege of bohemian Venice, tried to drive teenyboppers and hippies off Sunset Strip, regularly broke up peaceful love-ins and rallies in Griffith and Elysian Parks, suppressed lowriders on Whittier Boulevard, harassed kids selling the underground LA Free Press, raided coffeehouses and folk clubs, and invoked obscenity as an excuse to crack down on artists, poets and theater groups. No other major city outside of the deep south was subjected to such a fanatic and all-encompassing campaign to police space and control the night. Along with minorities, many young whites were also routinely victimized, leading hatred of the LAPD to grow into a common culture of resistance.

The cops, however, had a formidable opponent in the ACLU of Southern California, the national organizations most hard-charging and activist affiliate. When national ACLU director Roger Baldwin and a majority of the national leadership publicly embraced anti-communism in the late 1940s, AL Wirin, ACLU SoCals legendary chief counsel, pointedly challenged the ban on representing Communist party members in trial proceedings, taking on several cases in private practice.

Moreover, in 1952, the local branch chose as its new director Eason Monroe, a state college professor from San Francisco who had been fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. A decade later, Monroe charted a novel course for the affiliate by not only defending the local civil rights coalition in court but also joining in its leadership. Significantly, it was an ACLU team, led by UCLA professor John Caughey and his wife LaRee, that launched the legendary 1963 lawsuit to force integration of LAs de facto Jim Crow school system an effort that would reverberate for three decades. No other ACLU branch claimed such a large role in the decades protest movements.

Understanding Los Angeles in the 60s also requires rewriting the histories of gay liberation and the womens movement. Indeed, New York City was not the origin and center of everything. Los Angeles had the first gay street protest in America over police raids on the Black Cat Bar in Silver Lake, two years before the Stonewall uprising; it had the first gay church the Metropolitan community church, now the largest gay institution in the world; and it had the first officially recognized gay pride parade on Hollywood Boulevard in 1970. LA also witnessed the nations first police raid on a womens health clinic, following which the organizers were tried for practicing medicine without a license.

Finally, the course of events in Los Angeles challenged the myth that the Old Left was irrelevant in the 60s and that the New Left had invented itself ex nihilo. The Communist party, for its part, never appears in the standard narrative except as an unattractive corpse. But in Los Angeles its most unruly and dissident branch remained very much alive under the charismatic and eventually heretical leadership of Dorothy Healey.

Two
Two young Chicano men during a protest in Los Angeles, 1970. Photograph: BBC/David Fenton/Getty Images

Despite the partys devastating losses following Soviet secretary Nikita Khrushchevs 1956 Crimes of Stalin speech, Healey was determined to resurrect what she could of the 1940s Popular Front and to reach out to the new radicals on campus, in the ghettos and in the barrios. Still under the threat of a prison sentence, she found a niche at KPFK, the new 75,000-watt Pacifica Radio FM station, in 1959, where her Communist Commentaryimpressed even hostile listeners with its intelligence and wit although it almost cost the station its license. In 1966 she ran in the primary for county tax assessor and received a staggering 85,000 votes. By then the local Communist party had confidentially rebuilt many of its links with progressives in the Democratic party and had assumed an important role in the Peace Action Council. Its youth members, relatively unconstrained by a party line or adult control, played innovative roles in the early 60s, including participation in Southern Freedom Rides, and later, more influentially, as the Che-Lumumba Club which would become the political base of Angela Davis. For two generations Healey defined radicalism in the public eye.

This is a movement history of Los Angeles that looks at the city from the vantage points of its flatland neighborhoods and bohemian beaches where the young heroes of this story lived. We have tried to give human faces to social forces, to understand rebellion as a constant debate about goals and tactics, and to recall the passions of struggle, especially the power of love. It was also important to describe in some detail the machinery of racial oppression that kept good schools, well-paid jobs and suburban homes out of the reach of people living inside the citys ghettos and barrios.

At epic moments in the long decade the United Civil Rights campaign in 1963, the Watts uprising in 1965, and the wave of high school revolts from 1966 to 1969 the movement tried mightily to break through to the other side, only to face the batons and drawn guns of the LAPD. By 1973, repression had dug nearly 100 graves and put more than 10,000 protesters in jail or prison. An enormous effort has been made to trivialize the 60s and to bury its dreams in a paupers grave. But its unruly ghost, like that of the 1930s, still shakes its chains in the nightmares of elites.

  • Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties, by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener (Verso), is out now

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/los-angeles-black-brown-activism-1960s

Chuck D says Flavor Flav still in Public Enemy, and split was a hoax

Spat over Bernie Sanders rally announced as catastrophe to wake people up, as new track is launched featuring both rappers

Chuck D has said that Flavor Flav is still a member of Public Enemy, and his recent firing from the group was a satirical hoax.

On 1 March, Chuck D said the group would be moving forward without Flavor Flav, his colourful sideman since the inception of the political hip-hop group in the mid-1980s, adding: We thank him for his years of service and wish him well. He subsequently claimed he had been sued by Flav which Flav denied on Twitter and that Flav had been suspended from the group since 2016, complaining that he always chose to party over work. He also added that Flav better find rehab, and accused him of being motivated solely by money.

The spat seemed to have been triggered by Flav not performing at a Bernie Sanders rally, with Flav stating via lawyers that he had not endorsed any political candidate in this election cycle, and that Chuck D was not allowed to use Public Enemys image to endorse a candidate: While Chuck is certainly free to express his political view as he sees fit his voice alone does not speak for Public Enemy.

Flav himself tweeted: You wanna destroy something weve built over 35 years over politics? Ive been clean for 10 years & there is no PE w/o Flavor Flav. Im worried about you Chuck, you can divide people or bring people together, yall know what side Im on.

But Chuck D has now described the entire episode as a hoax: Does it take doing crazy sht [sic] or catastrophe to wake people up? Obviously so, even when paying attention is the cheapest price to pay, he wrote on his website.

He continued: I had watched Orson Welles War of the Worlds from 1938 when he pulled the wool over the publics eyes as they put 100% belief in the technology of radio. Most people followed like a Pavlovic dog just like they do now Hearing the confused mush of political talk while under the bowels of Trumpotus made me use a presidential stage as my platform. Out of this storm came a plan between Flav and me to remind people that whats important should have as much, if not more, value than just whats popular. Thus came the HOAX, our War of the Worlds.

Chuck D (@MrChuckD)

Important > popular…. Fcuk all else pic.twitter.com/2qjiIiyTsG

April 1, 2020

He added: Flav doesnt do benefits and stays away from political events we been cool and always agreed about that. He detailed the difference between Public Enemy a group featuring him and Flav with Enemy Radio, an auxiliary unit that features all the members except Flav, and which performed at the Bernie Sanders rally, in Los Angeles on 1 March.

The announcement came alongside a new single, billed as Enemy Radio featuring Public Enemy, that reunites Chuck D and Flavor Flav on a track. Food Is a Machine Gun castigates the US food industry, inspired by Kristin Lawlesss book Formerly Known As Food. The lyrics attack the US Food and Drug Administration, sugar intake, and the use of pesticides and chemicals in food production. An Enemy Radio album, Loud Is Not Enough, was also announced.

In a 70-minute interview with Tim Einenkel, Chuck D elaborated further about the situation. He said he wanted to help bring [Flavs] stock up, as negative stories were dominating over positive ones: I didnt like that he was getting hammered in the media.

He admitted there had been a cease and desist letter from Flavs lawyers, after the Sanders concert was billed as Public Enemy Radio rather than Enemy Radio. I know that hit a sore spot [with Flav] … and then came the cease and desist letter, and I counteracted … The bottom line was a plan to turn this into a teachable moment.

He argued that only negative news stories get traction The news you read about hip-hop is about another dead rapper and that this was proved by the news of him firing Flav, that actually proves the fact the gadgets are ruling the game.

Flavor Flav has not commented on the announcement or the interview.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/01/chuck-d-flavor-flav-public-enemy-split-hoax-bernie-sanders-rally-rappers

Lula: Bolsonaro leading Brazil ‘to slaughterhouse’ over Covid-19

Former president brands current leader a troglodyte who should be removed from office

Jair Bolsonaro is leading Brazilians to the slaughterhouse with his irresponsible handling of coronavirus, the countrys former president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva has said.

In an impassioned interview with the Guardian which came as Brazils Covid-19 death toll hit 1,924 Lula said that by undermining social distancing and defenestrating his own health minister, Brazils troglodyte leader risked repeating the devastating scenes playing out in Ecuador where families have had to dump their loved ones corpses in the streets.

Unfortunately I fear Brazil is going to suffer a great deal because of Bolsonaros recklessness I fear that if this grows Brazil could see some cases like those horrific, monstrous images we saw in Guayaquil, said the 74-year-old leftist.

We cant just want to topple a president because we dont like him, Lula admitted. [But] if Bolsonaro continues to commit crimes of responsibility [and] trying to lead society to the slaughterhouse which is what he is doing I think the institutions will need to find a way of sorting Bolsonaro out. And that will mean youll need to have an impeachment.

Bolsonaro a proudly homophobic former army captain already despised by progressive Brazilians for his hostility to the environment, indigenous rights and the arts, as well as his alleged links to Rios mafia has alienated millions more with his dismissive stance towards the coronavirus, which he belittles as media hysteria and a bit of a cold.

Since the World Health Organization declared the pandemic on 11 March, Brazils president has repeatedly thumbed his nose at social distancing, first by egging on and attending pro-Bolsonaro protests and then with a series of provocative visits to bakeries, supermarkets and pharmacies. During one unnecessary outing Bolsonaro declared: No one will hinder my right to come and go.

In March the rightwing populist even suggested Brazilians need not worry about Covid-19 since they could bathe in excrement and nothing happens.

Such moves put Bolsonaro at loggerheads with his own health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a doctor-turned-politician who was fired on Thursday after challenging the presidents behaviour.

Meanwhile Bolsonaros politician son, Eduardo, has taken the wrecking ball to ties with Brazils most important trade partner, China, by accusing its Communist party leaders of being to blame for the coronavirus crisis.

Bolsonaros actions have sparked nightly pot-banging protests in cities up and down the country and drawn scorn from across the political spectrum.

Coronavirus must be laughing its head off, Eliane Cantanhde, a columnist for the conservative Estado de So Paulo newspaper, wrote of Bolsonaros antics this week.

The rightwing governor of Brazils most populous state, So Paulo, has declared the country at war with both the coronavirus and the Bolsonaro-virus.

Former
Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil. Photograph: Andre Lucas/The Guardian

Lula, who governed from 2003 until 2010, claimed that Bolsonaros grotesque actions were endangering lives by ignoring distancing guidelines put in place by Brazils own health ministry.

Its natural that a portion of society doesnt understand the need to stay at home or how serious this is especially when the president of the republic is a troglodyte who says its just a little flu, Lula said by video call from the Brazilian city of So Bernardo do Campo, where he is in self-isolation after returning from a tour of Europe.

The truth is Bolsonaro doesnt think about the impact his destructive acts have on society. Hes reckless.

Bolsonaro says his opposition to distancing stems from his desire to protect Brazils most vulnerable citizens and their jobs.

After sacking his health minister, Bolsonaro claimed to be fighting for the long-suffering Brazilian people and warned coronavirus threatened to become a veritable meat grinder of jobs.

At no point has the government abandoned the neediest The impoverished masses cannot stay stuck up at home, Bolsonaro said. I know life is priceless. But the economy and jobs must return to normal.

Lula, who was born into rural poverty and won international plaudits for his fight against hunger, scoffed at the idea Bolsonaro was a champion of the poor.

Bolsonaro is only interested in himself, his kids, some pretty conservative generals and his paramilitary friends, he claimed, in reference to longstanding allegations over the Brazilian presidents family ties to the Rio de Janeiro mafia.

He doesnt speak to society. Bolsonaro doesnt have ears to listen. He just has a mouth to talk nonsense.

While Brazils former president claimed impeachment was an option, he conceded there was not currently support for that in the countrys congress, as there was when his leftwing successor Dilma Rousseff was removed from office in 2016.

He said many rightwing politicians thought it wiser to allow Bolsonaro to continue sabotaging his chances of re-election in 2022 through his own incompetence before electing another president from the right.

Lula, who was sidelined from 2018s election after being jailed on disputed corruption charges, signalled he would not be the leftwing candidate in that contest.

Workers
Workers in protective gear bury a person alongside rows of freshly dug graves at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Andr Penner/AP

Ive lost my political rights so Im not talking about myself, said Lula, who was released in November 2019 from 580 days in prison after a supreme court ruling.

But Ill tell you something, you can be certain the left will be governing Brazil again after 2022. We dont need to talk about who the candidate is right now. But we will vote for someone who is committed to human rights and respects them, who respects environmental protection, who respects the Amazon who respects blacks and the indigenous. Were going to elect someone who is committed to the poor of this country.

Observers of Brazilian politics are less sure Bolsonaro is totally finished or that the left is well positioned to replace him.

Some believe Bolsonaro one of just four world leaders still downplaying coronavirus alongside the authoritarian presidents of Nicaragua, Belarus and Turkmenistan has obliterated his chances of a second term with his response to the crisis.

But Thomas Traumann, a political commentator and communications minister under Rousseff, said such certainty was premature: There are two centuries to go until 2022.

Traumann said it was clear Bolsonaro had severely weakened himself but so far rightwing politicians such as the governors of Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo appeared to be capitalising on Bolsonaros blunders the most.

Jair
Jair Bolsonaro, right, with Luiz Henrique Mandetta, whom he has fired as health minister. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters

And ultimately Brazil was hurtling into such an unpredictable and potentially tumultuous few weeks that it was impossible to know what the political fallout might be.

We know Bolsonaro will come out of this weaker. We know his mistakes will not be forgiven, Traumann said.

How the political chips would fall after that was anyones guess, Traumman added, likening Brazils predicament to the start of a rollercoaster ride.

All we know is that many loops lie ahead We are moving into an unknown world We are sailing in the darkness.

Lula said he was certain of one thing: that at a moment of national crisis, Brazil needed a leader capable of uniting its 211 million citizens.

A president should be like the conductor of an orchestra, he said. The problem is that our conductor knows nothing about music, cant read a score and doesnt even know how the batons work.

Hes trying to play classical music with the instruments you use to play samba. Hes turned his orchestra into a madness a Tower of Babel, Lula said. He doesnt know what hes doing in the presidential palace Not even Trump takes him seriously.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/lula-bolsonaro-brazil-to-slaughterhouse-covid-19-coronavirus

Wallace Roney, US jazz trumpeter, dies aged 59 from coronavirus

Grammy-winning trumpeter who played with Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman dies in New Jersey hospital after being admitted last week

Wallace Roney, a Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter celebrated for his interpretations of Miles Davis, has died aged 59 after contracting Covid-19.

He died in hospital in Paterson, New Jersey, where he had been admitted last week, according to his fiancee, Dawn Felice Jones.

Roney, born in 1960, trained at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Howard University and Berklee College of Music. After playing clubs in New York, he was invited into the storied hard bop band led by Art Blakey, the Jazz Messengers. He was then hired by Tony Williams, the drummer who had played alongside Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter in Miles Daviss second great quintet, and recorded a number of albums with him during the 1980s. Roney also recorded 22 albums as leader in a post-bop or fusion style, beginning with 1987s Verses.

Aged 23, he met his hero Miles Davis, after playing in an ensemble for a retrospective concert as Davis collected an honorary degree. Davis became his mentor, and Roneys style would be frequently compared to Daviss. I never get tired of the comparisons to Miles I get tired of the critics trying to make it into a negative, he said last year. Because to me, its no comparison. Miles Davis is the greatest ever. What Im trying to do is continue and push forward from the lessons I learned from him and try to play this music.

In 1991, he was hired to play in rehearsals for orchestral reworkings of Daviss albums Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess, to be performed at that years Montreux jazz festival. He ended up being invited by Davis to perform alongside him in the concerts themselves. Davis died later that year Roney would win a Grammy in 1994 for the album A Tribute to Miles, playing Daviss parts alongside the remaining members of the quintet.

Over the years, he played alongside Ornette Coleman, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders and other jazz luminaries. In 2014, he premiered music composed by saxophonist Shorter during his time with Miles Daviss quintet.

He is survived by two children from his marriage to late pianist Geri Allen, Barbara and Wallace Jr.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/01/wallace-roney-us-jazz-trumpeter-dies-aged-59-from-coronavirus

Coronavirus Rhapsody: isolation is catalyst for slew of parody songs

Songs, often tinged with dark humour, strike a chord with audiences amid lockdown

From a family in Kent reworking a Les Miserables song to Queens Bohemian Rhapsody being turned into an ode to coping with Covid-19, self-isolation is proving the catalyst for a new breed of homemade viral songwriting.

The Marsh familys interpretation of One Day More clocked up 1.4m views, and made them internet stars with the lyrics (for example: Our grandparents are miles away / they cant work Skype, were brokenhearted) being reworked to reference life during lockdown.

Adrian Grimes and Dana Jay Beins version of Queens classic has clocked up 3.5m views, and turns it into bleak pastiche of the song with lines such as Im just a young boy, no job security. Both the songs share a dark sense of humour, are instantly recognisable to millions and have found an audience around the world.

The latest song to go viral is from a group of Chicago-based stand-up comedians who shot a lo-fi video inspired by this years Icelandic entry to Eurovision, Dai Freyrs Think About Things.

Garrett Williams (@badboygargar)

Day 17: morale is weird pic.twitter.com/TW4Xdv0qJH

March 30, 2020

Garrett Williams and his housemates shot the video in two hours, edited it over a similar amount of time and then posted the results on Twitter the video attracted more than 5m views within 24 hours of its release.

My roommate sent me the song and we were like this song slaps, said Williams. From there we were dancing to it and thought this could be a fun video, we made some suggestions for dance moves and outfits and put it all together.

The method behind such a huge viral hit is surprisingly simple, according to Williams. He explained that the idea from the Michel Gondry-esque music video came from listening to the song and idly dancing before leaving the house to buy food.

We were waiting to go pick up food or go to the store together and we started to play the song and one of us was bouncing, he said. From that we thought oh lets just make a video where everyone is bouncing the whole time. Thats it.

Williams says he has had friends who have found work in comedy off the back of viral videos and usually timing posts to launch when your audience is largest is a key part of success. However, in lockdown conditions, Williams says there is a new captive audience at almost any time of day, thirsty for brazenly uplifting content.

In our sphere theres a lot of talk about the best time to post, he said. But now everyone is at home no one has any idea about when the best time to post is. I sat on it for a day, and then my friends said just go for it, post it. So I did and its blown up in 24 hours.

Another motivation for Williams, Grimes and the Marsh family was to stay occupied while in isolation, with Williams saying the video filled the void of not having work to be busy with.

Our group likes to be on the go, were always doing shows and trying to keep busy with work, he said. With the quarantine situation we havent had a project, so last week we had a couple of ideas floating around and made this one.

There has been some negative reaction to the songs, particularly Grimes cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. Grimes addressed criticism of the songs lyrics such as Mama, I just killed a man / I didnt stay inside in bed / I walked past him, now hes dead, which were branded insensitive.

He explained that his wife was involved in healthcare and so he was aware of the impact Covid-19 was having on people. Grimes encouraged people to maintain their sense of humour and said he had also received many comments from people already affected by coronavirus have told me how much they appreciate this.

Williams thinks the parody videos are proving so popular but people were looking for something fun to distract themselves during isolation and also spending more time online.

At this time when there is a lot of bleak news, and really heavy stuff coming through people are looking for something that they can disassociate to, he said. Something that people can say oh, this is fun. We can still have fun and not have to be so scared all the time about everything.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/coronavirus-rhapsody-isolation-catalyst-slew-of-parody-songs

Jamaican reggae vocalist Bob Andy dies aged 75

Socially conscious singers hit version of Young, Gifted and Black reached No 5 in the UK charts with duo Bob and Marcia

Bob Andy, the reggae vocalist who performed a hit version of Young, Gifted and Black as part of the duo Bob and Marcia, has died aged 75 after a short illness.

His death was confirmed by his collaborator on that song, Marcia Griffiths, who told the Jamaica Observer he died at 8am on Friday 27 March.

Bob & Marcia reached No 5 in the UK in 1970 with Young, Gifted and Black, an uptempo recording of the Nina Simone original. They also reached No 11 in 1971 with Pied Piper, which spent 13 weeks in the charts.

Andy was born Keith Anderson in Kingston, Jamaica, and began his career in the groups the Binders and the Paragons before going solo in the mid-1960s. Recording in the legendary Studio One under producer Coxsone Dodd, he cut songs that would become reggae standards, such as Ive Got to Go Back Home and Too Experienced.

He also wrote songs that would be recorded by reggae stars including Gregory Isaacs, Ken Boothe and Delroy Wilson, along with solo numbers for Griffiths, although their partnership ended when she joined the I Threes, Bob Marleys group of backing vocalists.

Young, Gifted and Black was just one of his socially conscious songs. Others, such as Fire Burning and Check It Out, castigated capitalism and the ruling classes. But he suffered from health issues, including migraines, and put music to one side for a number of years from the late 1970s onwards, broadening into acting. He also became an A&R for Tuff Gong records, the label founded by Marley.

As his health improved, Andy returned to music in the 1990s. In 2006, he was awarded Order of Distinction by the Jamaican government for his services to music.

Reggae DJ David Rodigan was among those paying tribute, writing on Twitter: We all loved you Bob Andy and we know how much you loved us, your legions of fans all over the world. At least you are at peace now; youve left us a truly remarkable repertoire of songs which we will all treasure for ever.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/27/jamaican-reggae-vocalist-bob-andy-dies-aged-75-young-gifted-black

Dolly Parton pledges $1m to coronavirus vaccine research

Donation to Tennessee institute comes as country star launches bedtime story initiative to offer a welcome distraction for children

Dolly Parton has donated $1m (800,000) to research into a coronavirus vaccine, as she begins a new storytelling series for children in lockdown.

The country music star wrote on Instagram:

My longtime friend Dr Naji Abumrad, whos been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements towards that research of the coronavirus for a cure. I am making a donation of $1 million to Vanderbilt towards that research and to encourage people that can afford it to make donations.

Abumrad works at the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation at Vanderbilt University hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He and Parton became friends in 2014 after the singer was involved in a car accident and was treated at Vanderbilt. His son, Jad, subsequently interviewed Parton for the podcast Dolly Partons America.

Numerous teams are working on research into a coronavirus vaccine. US biotech firm Moderna began trials for a vaccine on 16 March, with Chinese firm CanSino Biologics launching its own trials the same day. The World Health Organization lists 52 other firms developing potential vaccines.

Parton is fighting another front of the coronavirus crisis: bored children. On Thursday she is launching Goodnight With Dolly, a bedtime story series on YouTube, beginning with a reading of The Little Engine That Could. She said she hoped the series would be a welcome distraction during a time of unrest, and inspire a love of reading and books.

Parton has long championed reading, with her charity, Imagination Library, having given more than 130m books to children.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/02/dolly-parton-1m-coronavirus-vaccine-research