Sunday Music: Brightblack Morning Light & State of the Blog

As we head into our third month here at the Pomegranate it seems like a good time to pause and ask where we are going. So here are a few thoughts and some news about upcoming posts for you to ponder while you enjoy this awesome track from California psych-rock band Brightblack Morning Light (as promised):

In reviewing my posts I realize that there have been a lot centered around Palestine/Israel. Partly that has been a result of my horror over the assault on Gaza, which was in full swing as I began this blog, and then the annual observation of Israeli Apartheid Week. However, it is fair to say that the occupation of Palestine has been a growing focus of my activism in recent years. Certainly there are other important issues in and around the Middle East re: politics and culture and we will address some of these. However, Palestine/Israel will remain an open topic for us here at the Pomegranate.

I have a series of artist interviews in the works that will begin appearing soon. I will be having conversations with artists in different media around the notion of culture and politics, and publishing the transcripts. This will be an ongoing series and hopefully we will begin to hear from international artists on these themes. This has been logistically difficult to organize but I am excited about it.

Also: I have been invited to become a regular contributor at Racialicious so I will be cross-posting there on race and pop culture in a broad sense, and on Orientalism and cultural representations of the Middle East in particular. If you are unfamiliar with Racialicous I urge you to check it out, it sets the standard for discussions of race and culture.

Finally, I will post random music to the site on an occasional basis, as above, mostly for fun.

If you have topics you would like to see explored here please tag me on Delicious @vspomegranate.