The roster for the Coachella festival (pictured) has Drake, AC/DC and Jack White as headliners; Mica Levi conducts a live performance of her award-winning movie score; a look at the latest gadgets debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show; an effort to expand Wikipedia entries for African-American artists.
Editing Wikipedia, one African-American artist at a time
On a recent Sunday morning, a group of about a dozen people convened at the California African American Museum in L.A.'s Exposition Park. They didn't come to passively stroll through the exhibits though. They sat at tables, typing away on laptops, with printouts strewn around them.
Sharon Kyle was trying to find information on a prominent African-American doll maker named Glenda Hooker, but Kyle noticed something.
"I did a Google image search using the keywords: Glenda, Hooker, Dolls... None of it's coming up on Wikipedia," Kyle said. "And I know that she did this work for 30 years in the Los Angeles area."
Kyle and the other volunteers took part in what's called a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, organized by local Wikipedia master Stacey Allan. The seventh in a series of events that Allan calls Unforgetting L.A., the event at the museum provided participants with step-by-step instructions on how to get started editing Wikipedia. Denise McIver, the museum's research librarian, assisted with pulling articles from reliable databases and even the old-fashioned stacks in the adjoining library.
"The goal for today is to train new people how to edit Wikipedia," Allan said. "And the second goal is to write new articles for people who aren't currently represented online."
Marilyn Nix decided to spend her Sunday morning enriching the Internet too. She was astonished to see L.A.-based sculptor Fred Eversley left out of of the user-generated online encyclopedia. "He's really quite famous," she said. "It's amazing that Wikipedia has missed him."
According to Allan, Nix isn't the only one surprised to see what's been left out of Wikipedia.
Take Evangeline Montgomery, for example. An accomplished artist and educator, Montgomery has an arts scholarship dedicated to her. But before the Unforgetting L.A. event, she had no Wikipedia page.
"A lot of people know that Wikipedia has some issues," Allan said. "I think 75 percent of Wikipedia editors are under the age of 30. And I want to say only about 12 percent of them are female."
By training new editors, Allan hopes the information on Wikipedia will become "more representative of the culture at large."
Teka-Lark Fleming was another volunteer who made it to the event, but she didn't need help with the Wikipedia basics. A self proclaimed Wikipedia editor, Fleming runs a video blog and podcast called The Black Grrrl Show. She sees gaps in Wikipedia's coverage, especially when it comes to chronicling black L.A.
"I think we need to have a more complex, broad view of black life in Los Angeles," Fleming said. "Beyond rap music — there's more to L.A. than that."
Coachella 2015: What you need to know about the lineup
Coachella has announced its lineup for this year's desert dust-up, kicking off the festival season and previewing which bands you'll be seeing on the circuit this year.
Philip Cosores, a contributing editor for the music website Consequence of Sound, breaks down the Coachella lineup for The Frame:
Why was AC/DC chosen as a headliner?
AC/DC sells a lot of albums. Their albums debut at number one, number two. On the Internet, where I live, they're not really that big of a deal, but in the real world — I don't know what that is — they do matter and Coachella seems to be tapping into that. My parents might be stoked.
Who are the "Must See" acts?:
Each day has an overwhelming amount of artists that I personally would want to see. I think of it in terms of, if every website or magazine put out their "best album of 2014" in the last few weeks, and if you go through those lists and look at what bands are on this lineup, you'll see almost every artist, from:
The War on Drugs:
Run the Jewels:
Angel Olsen:
St. Vincent:
These are all the biggest albums of last year and they're all on the lineup.
Biggest surprise:
Lykke Li yesterday canceled a bunch of tour dates and said she wanted to take time off to heal her body, and then you see her on the lineup. I don't know if that means that they didn't have time to change the poster after that announcement, or if she's resting up for Coachella.
Most "Out of Place" band:
It's been a tradition lately for Coachella to book these very KROQ-centric acts. You saw AFI last year, Bad Religion this year, where they're trying to crossover a little bit. It makes me scratch my head.
To discover more of the lineup, you can visit the Coachella website.
Mica Levi finds inspiration in nature and the cosmos for 'Under The Skin' score
Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s thriller “Under the Skin” made a lot of Top 10 lists for 2014. Critics singled out Scarlett Johansson’s dark portrayal of a sexy alien who is sent to earth to capture male prey.
But the eerie soundtrack composed by classically trained British musician Mica Levi has been receiving the lion's share of praise and awards, including the European Film Award for Best Composer. Not bad for her first film score ever — Levi, 27, is best known as the brainchild of the band Micachu & The Shapes.
Levi was recently named co-winner of the 2014 Best Musical Score award by the L.A. Film Critics Association. The Frame's host John Horn caught up with Levi to talk about her musical approach.
What was the main inspiration for the score?:
The intention of the music is not to manipulate, but I was told to follow [Scarlett Johansson's character's] experiences in real time as much as I could. So I guess the movie is just staying true to what she's experiencing. She was the guiding force for everything really.
On your track, "Creation," it sounds like a swarm of bees getting closer:
Bees are what it was meant to be like. That music actually, it was supposed to be like another life form, like a really busy, complicated, but live thing that's not quite conceivable, but just active and sinister.
What was the technique involved in creating that sound?:
So you got the energy that a person has playing very fast. It's very quick. And then the articulation of it, the kind of texture of it uses extended technique. So instead of trying to produce a nice, even, rounded tone, they're supposed to play as fast as they can independently of one another, so you get very complicated, illogical, active sound that way.
I guess a lot of the score was influenced by nature, like the sea and the idea of a cosmos and stuff, but this specifically is just active life or life getting made.
What piece are you most proud of from your score?:
I guess I feel kind of proud of "Love," but I feel proud of all of it.
Why 'Love?'
You know what, it's only just because people have said they like it. [Laughs] It's not even my opinion.
You're holding your finger to the wind and it's blowing favorably on that track.
Yeah, I was sort of answering it. I wasn't answering it from my perspective. It was just like, What do people like from it? People have mentioned that one to me a couple of times.