Monthly Archives: February 2021

External photo of the Academic Innovation Center and the TAMIU Trailblazers Tower, completed in 2020.

External photo of the Academic Innovation Center and the TAMIU Trailblazers Tower, completed in 2020.

External photo of the Academic Innovation Center and the TAMIU Trailblazers Tower, completed in 2020.

External photo of the Academic Innovation Center and the TAMIU Trailblazers Tower, completed in 2020.

TAMIUs 50th anniversary: Planning the next 50 years

As TAMIU celebrates its 50th anniversary, Laredo Morning Times took a detailed look back at the history of the university. This is Part 12 of 12.

For over half a century, Texas A&M International has molded members of the region and around the world into nurses, scientists, writers, artists and more.

In the year 2020, it is hard to imagine Laredo without its university, and the improvements it has brought to the community will not soon be forgotten. While this year has been a tough year for many amid the coronavirus pandemic, just like the university, they carry on.

For 50 years, the university has adapted to the ever-changing community and its needs. And for the next 50 years, it will continue to do the same as well.

According to president Dr. Pablo Arenaz, TAMIU is expected to grow from 10,000 to 12,000 students in the next five years who will all look forward to graduating from either undergraduate, graduate or doctoral programs. To do so, it is also planning to move into a doctoral/professional university, and Arenaz said it is on the way to being recognized as a destination university for several of its programs that will continue to expand to meet the standards of both the students and the industry.

We have plans to expand our doctoral offerings to include degrees in criminal justice, border studies, education, eventually biology, engineering and nursing, he said. We have also recently added degrees in public health as well as petroleum and computer engineering. Also included in our plans is a Center for Entrepreneurship and an Incubator, a Center for Border Security and an Institute for Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy.

In 10 years, the first phase of adding to the area includes a tennis complex which will start by moving the athletic facilities to the back 100 acres. The complex is a partnership between the university and the City of Laredo, and it will be funded by the city. This will allow TAMIU to add tennis, mens and womens track & field, and beach volleyball over the next 5-7 years while keeping the academic focus for the existing campus.

According to Arenaz, students and staff can also expect significant growth in engineering, biology, psychology, the humanities, nursing, education and business programs and degrees. The proposed Center for Border Security and the International Institute for Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy are being designed to expand research capabilities that are critical to the region.

However, the university is not a one-person show.

Hundreds of dedicated staff and faculty members strive for improvement each year, and many have their own goals to complete. Whether its athletics, humanities, science or any field of study, the directors at TAMIU also have a 50-year plan that should delight students who will be veterans in their fields and others who may be going to their first day of school at elementary.

Dr. Claudia San Miguel, the Dean of the TAMIU College of Arts and Sciences, said that the largest and most comprehensive academic unit is currently in development. When finished, it will create new academic opportunities and impactful research to benefit the people of the South Texas region and beyond.

This will include three new degrees that are meant to diversify and enhance career choices. Among them are a doctorate in criminal justice and a bachelors in computer engineering and petroleum engineering. Both current and future students will have more choices, and over the years, more choices will continue to be added. In 2022, a masters in systems engineering is planned to start in the fall.

The college is also an intellectual and research hub. We are proud of the numerous articles, books, creative works and performances produced by 100-plus faculty members, San Miguel said. We are especially honored that the college earned a highly-competitive research grant of $1.65 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This grant will generate new knowledge that advances learning strategies for undergraduate STEM education here and at other Hispanic-serving institutions.

As Laredo is a border town and in 2020 is the strongest land port in the U.S., a heavy emphasis on business both domestically and internationally would be a boon for any student who sees themselves owning or managing a business.

The plans to grow the undergraduate and masters program are always a benefit for students in the area alongside the doctorate program. Additional concentrations, such as a doctorate, masters and an undergraduate degree in international trade and entrepreneurship, are being developed.

These new programs will further strengthen the Sanchez Schools portfolio and underscore its ongoing value to the communities and regions it so proudly serves, Dean of the A.R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business Dr. Steve Sears said.

To complement these programs and opportunities, there are three research centers recognized for their contributions to the Laredo Community and Beyond, Sears said.

The Small Business Center has been recognized with awards for innovative practices among its peers in meeting the needs of small businesses here.

The Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development provides valuable trade data for the border region.

The Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade, with the collaboration of the International Bank of Commerce, brings noted speakers to Laredo to speak on timely issues facing our border and beyond.

With the generous gift by Mr. A.R. Sanchez, Jr. and the perseverance, dedication and vision of State Sen. Dr. Judith Zaffirini to establish a doctoral program in her hometown university, the A.R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business has worked hard to build a reputation as a small but powerful business school, Sears said. It is known for its rigorous programs, quality faculty and high research standards, and it is one of the smallest accredited doctoral programs in the world.

According to Dr. James OMeara, the Dean of the College of Education, the goal of preparing 100% of educators in Laredo will continue. He adds that the college has enjoyed record undergraduate intakes, and their online graduate programs continue to grow and attract candidates from across Texas. These candidates are said to have a 100% pass rate in most certification areas, and graduate students have continued to be published in peer-reviewed publications.

As the pandemic has challenged educators across the globe, OMeara said students will also obtain a Google Classroom and Remote Educator Certification to train them in teaching classes in both remote and on-campus settings. This training will not only serve as a reminder of the importance of education and their roles but will also prepare them for other situations in the future.

Through partnerships with the Fun Academy, Raising Texas Teachers and the A&M Systems We Teach Texas initiatives, the goal will continue to be to produce Day 1 ready teachers that are certified and committed to making a difference in and beyond their classroom.

Preparing teachers for the next 50 years requires us to go beyond the successes of 2020, OMeara said.

As medical-oriented students continue to strive for their careers, the College of Nursing at TAMIU will continue to improve and adapt to the growing needs of the community.

A long-term plan will include a new masters degree program in nursing, public health, communication science disorders and kinesiology non-certification, said Dr. Marivic Torregosa, the Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Over time, there will be curriculum changes to increase enrollment in kinesiology non-certification programs, as well as a track of pre-physical therapy for students who want to proceed in physical therapy after completing the non-certified degree.

There will also be an RN to MSN program that is being planned to help nurses with associate degrees transition to a masters degree in nursing. Torregosa said that a masters in public health will be offered in three years, and drafts for a masters degree in speech language pathology have been developed and are under internal review.

As the School of Nursing accepts students considered at-risk, underrepresented and first-generation, Torregosa said that the program was ranked 11th in the state, outranking other schools such as the Texas Womans University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

This report is a reflection of the rigor of our BSN program and the commitment of the nursing faculty for student success. Likewise, it also reflects the hard work of our students, she said. The college will continuously mold and hone our programs so that we are preparing graduates who are equipped with the knowledge and skills to problem-solve the healthcare challenges of today and tomorrow.

TAMIU has plans and improvements for alumni or current students planning to continue education after their undergraduate degrees. According to Dr. Jennifer Coronado, the Dean of the TAMIU Graduate School, plans to expand the degree and certificate offerings will continue through the years, starting with the launch of a masters in curriculum and instruction with a specialization in educational leadership and another specialization in special education.

Additionally, a masters in information science and in the family nurse practitioner program will be available this fall. A doctorate in criminal justice is being reviewed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and if approved, students will be able to register starting in the fall of 2021.

To complement the College of Educations goal of providing remote-instruction training and certification, a masters in curriculum and instruction with a specialization in education technology will also be available for future teachers. The program will help them find better ways to master planning, delivery and assessments while also knowing how to deliver effective and engaging lessons in a virtual environment.

The TAMIU Advancing Research and Curriculum Initiative, a long-term project, is meant to expand the number of Hispanic and other underrepresented graduate and professional students that can be served by expanding courses and institutional resources, Coronado said. She said the project will rigorously examine the metrics that lead to success for graduate students within a dominantly Hispanic population.

We also continue to build on a legacy of faculty and student research collaboration that is uncommon for a university of our size and youth. Student researchers from TAMIU earned the highest number of awards at the competitive 16th-annual Pathways Student Research Symposium that TAMIU hosted last fall, Coronado said. Over 400 student and faculty representatives from throughout the Texas A&M University System gathered at TAMIU for the two-day competition. TAMIU student researchers earned 18 of the 61 awards presented.

With the mission of the University College to empower students to become competent, resilient and self-determined, TAMIU Dean of the University College Dr. Barbara Hong said the college is undergoing major restructuring.

An improved Advising & Mentoring Center is being developed with all the colleges academic success coaches. This is to provide students more consistent and coherent advisement on their majors without interruptions from freshmen enrollment until graduation, Hong said.

The improved AMC, University Learning Center and the reading and writing center will have extended hours, weekends and virtual meetings to meet the students needs now and for the next 50 years.

We aim to enhance the skills of every student through personal empowerment paths that foster a learning community, critical thinking and global citizenship, Hong said. Students will be equipped with a growth mindset, a meaningful purpose and a sense of belonging as they navigate through their education at TAMIU.

The First-Year Seminar will also be restructured to help teach students to cultivate their sense of self-awareness, self-empowerment, self-advocacy and self-regulation. Hong said those skills are essential and are reinforced by a students growth, purpose and sense of belonging (GPS). Additionally, the freshman Signature Course will also help expose students to international, interdisciplinary and intellectual problem-based/inquiry learning.

According to Hong, the course is meant to improve students critical thinking, communication and teamwork skills by tackling real-world problems in their communities and using their sense of self to help others during their academic journey.

We seek to prepare every student who enters TAMIU with a mindset that they are here to grow intellectually, socially, emotionally and professionally, Hong said.

With another 50 years on the horizon, TAMIU staff and leaders cannot change the university by themselves. The goal of improving the community can only start and end with everyone in the community giving input and coming together to advance the university. As Arenaz regularly meets with student government to cooperate in the planning, he said that their input was added to the Academic Innovation Center.

With that in mind, students, staff and alumni have also stated what they believe the university can add and where it can improve. The additions may take months of planning or years of implementing, but the university has the next 50 years to improve and become a university worthy of a major 100-year anniversary.

Alumna Rebekah Maria Rodriguez said she hopes to see an expansion of student services such as health services and student counseling, as those services helped her throughout most of her college years. She believes they are important services, but due to the limited number of counselors and a growing population of students, an expansion would benefit the students in a greater capacity.

Mindy Lee would like to see the communication coursework be added into the core curriculum as opposed to having just English coursework.

It is so important for students to learn basic communication skills and strategies, Lee said. Many students are completing their degrees without learning skills vital to being a competent communicator.

Ryan Duncan-Ayala said he would like to see a larger focus in the arts and hopes to see an improvement and expansion on the current theater program. On the flip side, Miguel Inclan hopes to see more undergraduate and graduate programs involving local government like city planning, sustainability and water/environmental policy, homeland security and emergency management, and more.

As an example of lifes unpredictability, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 changed the way the people of Laredo will remember the year. Despite the uncertainty and fear, people persevere for the hopes of a better future. Fifty years ago, TAMIU students and staff could probably not imagine what the university would be like today. As a cornerstone of the Laredo community, it has evolved from a simple university to a beacon of a grander future for students of all generations.

With the support of an experienced staff, cooperation between them and their students and with strong leadership, TAMIU is striving to continue molding incoming students into nurses, doctors, teachers, scientists, artists, dancers, musicians, engineers and so much more.

In 50 years, who knows what the university will evolve into, but it is already working on it.

Link:

TAMIUs 50th anniversary: Planning the next 50 years - Laredo Morning Times

Is 2021 the year of the woman? The Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region sure seems to think so, and they are ready to celebrate by showcasing a few dynamic women right here in the Pikes Peak region. On Feb. 1, as part of the #ElevatedbyArt campaign series, COPPeR and a team of regional art leaders shared a new video titled Boss It Up featuring dancer and entrepreneur Latisha Hardy and the Boss Ladies dance team.

The #ElevatedbyArt campaign was launched in October of 2020 by a collective of creators and leaders in the arts in Colorado Springs. Its purpose is to illustrate the importance of the arts in lifting up and supporting the community as a whole through shared stories, creative efforts and experiences. Prominent local creators like Hardy are given a platform to share their work, and the community is invited to collaborate by sharing their own stories and posts at the campaign website, elevatedbyart.com.

Hardy established the Latisha Hardy Dance Studio in 2010. While salsa is the form of dance she says helped her to persevere through tough times, the studio embraces multiple types of dance including mambo, bachata, kizomba and zouk, with online options for participation.

The studios ladies team welcomes dancers of all ages and backgrounds, offering them a chance to perform together. The team meets several days each week to train and has built a sort of camaraderie a benefit in addition to the endorphins generated by the rigors of dance.

The dance floor is the only place I feel I can truly express myself, says Hardy. My goal today is to empower the world to empower themselves through the art of dance.

The new video shared by the studio certainly achieves that goal. It features clips of the dance team performing together, interspersed with clips of the dancers sharing candid stories about difficult experiences in their personal lives and how dance empowered them to heal. During the video, Hardy shares her own personal experience about planning for her future after getting out of an abusive relationship.

The only goal I had in life was to say yes to any opportunity that I could, said Hardy.

Her passion caught the attention of the #ElevatedbyArt team, who was excited to share Hardys enthusiasm and message of empowerment as part of the campaign.

The #ElevatedbyArt campaign committee was just so moved by Latishas energy and commitment to empowering her students, says campaign chair Angela Seals, We believe she literally embodies the healing power of art as she passes it along to her students.

free, elevatedbyart.com

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#ElevatedbyArt campaign highlights Latisha Hardy and the Boss Ladies dance team - Colorado Springs Independent

Thumb through any used record collection worth a damn, and you're bound to come across a dog-eared copy of Carole King's Tapestry. It's one of the quintessential records of the 1970s, the sort of cultural artifact that has become a recognizable totem for a specific time and place.

Released 50 years ago this week, Tapestry is a record whose very title has become shorthand for "all-time great." The recent Rolling Stone poll of the 500 best albums ever placed it at No. 25, and it was one of the first LPs of its era to be preserved by the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, inducted alongside the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run.

King had been in the pop game for a little more than a decade before Tapestry was released a day after her 29th birthday. Working amongst the coterie of scrappy young songwriters in New York's Brill Building, King and her then-husband Gerry Goffin penned a slew of radio hits in the 1960s for other artists "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" for the Shirelles; "Up on the Roof" for the Drifters; the dance craze classic "The Loco-Motion," which was recorded by their babysitter Little Eva.

She was one of the most prolific songwriters that most people didn't know, and after her personal and professional partnership with Goffin ended and her band the City called it quits, she branched out on her own in the late '60s. King's solo debut, 1970's Writer, is made up of leftover songs she had written with Goffin (who co-produced the album), and it blends sock hop-era nostalgia with Woodstock-era spaciness.

The album holds up well today, but it didn't get King the recognition she'd hoped for. Tapestry would change all that.

After her separation from Goffin, King became entrenched within the now-mythic musical community of Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon neighborhood, rubbing elbows with the likes of the Doors, Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell (who later contributed backing vocals on Tapestry). The freedom and fluidity of that era is all over Tapestry, which was recorded in a matter of weeks with super-producer Lou Adler and rushed into release in February 1971, a month after it was finished.

"While we were recording the album I wasn't thinking about all the people who might be affected by it, nor was I thinking about the level of success it might attain," King wrote in her memoir, A Natural Woman. "I just wanted to get the songs on tape, enjoy the process with my friends and fellow musicians, and maybe get some radio play."

Perhaps it's that lack of pretense that made the album so effective. It's difficult now to listen to Tapestry and divorce yourself from its legacy, because it almost sounds like a greatest hits compilation. Just about every song has become a standard. It lives up to its title as a patchwork of songs new and old, and the album really serves two functions at once: It's a contemporary singer-songwriter showcase, but it's also a career retrospective of a musician who had been toiling behind the scenes for years without the recognition she deserved.

Tapestry opens with a trio of classic tracks that represent one of the greatest gauntlet throws in pop history the rollicking "I Feel the Earth Move," followed by the wistful ballad "So Far Away," followed by the remorseful relationship postmortem "It's Too Late." All three were massive hits and have become radio staples, and they're arguably King's three most famous originals.

Following that stellar opening, there's the self-empowerment anthem "Beautiful," which lent its name to a Tony Award-winning jukebox musical of King's songbook, and "Where You Lead," perhaps best known as the theme song for Gilmore Girls. The stripped-down "You've Got a Friend" would be covered by King's regular collaborator James Taylor (who also plays guitar and sings on Tapestry), becoming his first No. 1 hit mere months after Tapestry was released. King reimagines "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which Aretha Franklin made into a hit in 1968, and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" The loping story song "Smackwater Jack" is tinged with gospel and country-rock, while the cozy "Home Again" and "Way Over Yonder" give you the impression you're sitting at the base of King's piano. There's not a single dud.

When it hit record stores, Tapestry was an instant smash. It topped the Billboard charts, eventually selling more than 10 million copies, and the single featuring "It's Too Late" and "I Feel the Earth Move" was a No. 1 hit. It won Album of the Year at the 1972 Grammys, beating such juggernauts as George Harrison's triple album All Things Must Pass, the Carpenters' self-titled debut, and the soundtracks of Shaft and Jesus Christ Superstar.

A follow-up album, Music, was rushed out for the 1971 Christmas season and instantly topped the charts, as well. Though it successfully piggybacked off the popularity of Tapestry, it wasn't met with the same rapturous response. In fact, none of King's follow-up albums are ever mentioned in the same breath as her breakout LP, although 1974's Wrap Around Joy brought her two more big hits with the singles "Jazzman" and "Nightingale." Her last album of original material, Love Makes the World, was released in 2001.

But it's not like King needs to justify a legacy. After all, she wrote more iconic tracks before she was 30 than most musicians record in their entire careers. What's so endearing about Tapestry is that it doesn't sound like a blockbuster album. It has a homey, lived-in quality, from the cover image of King and her cat lounging in a window ledge to the sterling collection of songs that were mostly cherry-picked from an existing catalog. It's like a comfy sweater, perhaps the most modest behemoth album ever recorded. It has endured for five decades, and I have no doubt that it'll endure for five more.

Read the rest here:

Carole King's Tapestry turns 50, and it's still one of the greatest singer-songwriter albums of all time - Pacific Northwest Inlander

Despite a pandemic that warped this years Sundance experience into a self-isolated, laptop-driven stream-a-palooza, the overall slate of films on demand was actually a fairly solid lineup of predictably unpredictable indie storytelling. There were films with prestige and films that crowd-pleased, there were nightmarish midnight movies and metaphorical fantasies to cope with overwhelming realities. There was a mostly evergreen feel to the cine-cornucopia, except for a clutch of titles that felt very of-the-moment with weighted feelings of impending doom.

Oscar bait abounded, as per usual, with one title aiming for Academy Award glory when the latest edition of that delayed-eligibility ceremony airs April 25th. Judas and the Black Messiah, Shaka Kings ferocious thriller about the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, joined the Sundance lineup as a last-minute entry and comes out a week after its virtual premiere. The films galvanic leads, including Daniel Kaluuya as sleepy-eyed martyr Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as the jittery FBI mole who betrayed him, are classic kudos catnip. And the indignant biopic checks all those boxes that Oscar voters usually require, presenting a dramatically familiar but still forcefully effective look at racial injustice in America.

Looking ahead to next years Oscar race are Passing, Rebecca Hills prim, delicately devastating look at light-skinned African-Americans in 1920s Harlem; and Jockey, Clint Bentleys minor-key melodrama about an aging horseman thats as quietly earthy as it is emotionally shattering. And Hill and Bentley, both making their feature directorial debuts, craft sumptuous expressionistic images that enhance and enrich the experience.

Passing, shot in velvety black and white, uses a boxy traditional aspect ratio to make its story feel even more suffocating. Jockeys golden-hour cinematography and chiaroscuro lighting give its tale an elegiac grandeur. But the acting truly elevates both films. Tessa Thompsons upper-class Black housewife is a model of brittle decorum, while Ruth Neggas best friend, hiding her racial identity from the rich racist white man she married, exudes a blithe joi de vivre that belies an ocean of anguish. Jockey has a trio of performances that elevate the film to high tragedy: Clifton Collins, Jr. breaks away from the pack with his majestically understated pathos, a middle-aged rider riddled with regrets, with vital support from Molly Parker as a sympatico but pragmatic horse owner and Moises Arias as the eager, admiring son he never had.

Why all the grim faces? Easy charms made a handful of movies irresistibly sweet and predictably heartwarming. CODA, the jaunty emotional bullseye that stands for Child of Deaf Adults, is the YOLO of hearing-impaired coming-of-age dramedies. The hoary But I want to sing! plot-point chestnut gets a twist, as honey-voiced teenage daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) tussles with the parents-just-dont-understand tropebecause her songs literally fall on deaf ears. Add in a subplot about her family being a multi-generational fishing clan in Gloucester, with Ruby as the lifeline intermediary between their silent world and the town, and you get the makings of a classic choose your life crossroads. Its obvious, its effective, and it goes down easy with dollops of feelgood positivity.

Together Together, meanwhile, turns a surrogate pregnancy arrangement into a meet-cute between middle-aged app developer Ed Helms and diffident anti-romantic twentysomething Patti Harrison. She agrees to have his baby for the money, hes stunned that she doesnt seem to give a hoot. And over the course of nine months, the two lonelyhearts make each other a better person. Its an obvious arc, but Helms and Harrison exude some disarming sugar-and-spice chemistry. His wide-eyed enthusiasm masks a battered but durable optimism for life, while her eye-roll whateverism is the classic defense against a world that already rejected her.

The most surprisingly endearing film was Playing with Sharks, a polished but paint-by-numbers documentary about Australian deep sea diver Valerie Taylor. Star of 70s documentary Blue Water, White Death, consultant on megahit Jaws, innovator of the chainmail diving suit, and lifelong conservationist, Taylor is just as vivacious now as in the 1960s, when she was the blonde-bombshell winner of the Womens Spearing Championship. Ill probably be diving when Im in a wheelchair, the octogenarian says, before flipping into the ocean for yet another aquatic outing.

Those with a diabetic intolerance for treacly narratives, fear not. Sundances midnight slots went for the jugular. Sometimes literally: in the sumptuous gothic horrorshow Eight for Silver, a gypsy curse causes terror in a 19th century French village, as lycanthropy rips through the townsfolk. An electric opening sectioncapped by a shocking massacre at a Romany encampmentslowly gives way to a flabby midsection of silly jump scares in shock-me-awake nightmares. Plus: hairless werewolves? Odd creative choice. Still, exquisite production value and arresting visual compositions keep this highbrow flesh-render never less than engaging.

The retro-horror film Censor conjured fetishistic visions of early-80s video stores, static-rippled CRT images and the zzt-zzt grind of VHS machinery. A troubled woman on a government review board must rate the video nasties that were a staple of the burgeoning home entertainment craze. Her notes are a hoot. Eye gouging must go! reads one of her scribbles. But her sisters unresolved disappearance as a child continues to haunt her, until shes convinced that the missing kid is now an adult actress in one of these grindhouse flicks. Cue the slow spiral into madness and delusions of gore-filled axe-chopping. Plus: death by award statuette. Its inspired, until its not.

The prize for preachy provocation goes to Pleasure, an art-house harangue about the perils of being a porn star. A barely-legal Swede flies to L.A. with dreams of cum-soaked fame. Warning: it doesnt end well. An initially promising look at 21st-century adult entertainment, Pleasure takes a cheeky peek at entrepreneurial performers with DIY viral marketing and oddly femme-friendly crews that churn out shockingly misogynistic content. But, after flirting with notions of personal empowerment and body-image agency, it quickly descends into obvious backstabbing and cut-bait friendships. Think All About Eve, but with rough sex and interracial double-penetration.

Worse yet was Mother Schmuckers, a Belgian campfest that could double as a celluloid shart. Imagine a young, witless John Waters directing Clerks and youll get a sense of the puerile go-for-the-gutter ambition on display. Two brothers fry up feces for breakfast, lose the family dog, indulge in gunplay, drive their whore-mother crazy, dance in a gonzo music video, and then end up at a bestial orgy. Theres also a scene where homeless vagrants offer up sex with a dead body. Offended yet? More like bored.

Surrealism is a staple of any cineaste diet, so its no surprise that Sundance offered up a few metaphor-friendly films. Those in the market for masochistic parenting will enjoy Pascual Sistos John and the Hole, a chilly, empty-headed drama about a young teenage boy who, for no clear reason, decides to drug his well-off family and throw them into an unfinished concrete bunker. An oddly shallow what-have-we-done-to-deserve-this? condemnation of the affluent and their presumably amoral spawn, John and the Hole traffics in the type of Austrian nihilism that won Michael Haneke two Palme dOrs. Only difference is that Haneke spent more than three decades refining his singular brand of spiritual despair, while Sisto seemed to have binge-watched a master filmmaker and figured he got the gist of it. The result is a Hole thats not very deep.

More intriguing, and marginally more successful, is Mayday, Karen Cinorres through-the-looking-glass feminist fantasy. A put-upon wedding reception waitress (Grace Van Patten) escapes through a kitchen oven door and somehow lands on a WWII-era Pacific island. A misfit band of female GIs finds her and, led by Mia Goth, they send out siren-like SOS calls from a beached submarine so that nearby soldiers will crash on the rocks and drown. Their sociopathic behavior is apparently overcompensation for the chauvinist hostility in their lives. Its time to stop hurting yourself and start hurting others, growls Goth. Van Patten eventually becomes troubled by the severe retribution, but not before reveling in empowering sequences of girl-power independence. Its a just-go-with-it premise that belabors its points, although Cinorres eye for striking composition and confidence with emotional truth bodes well for future projects.

Two documentaries played with perception in more unsettling ways. Rodney Aschers eerie A Glitch in the Matrix takes a look at people who are convinced that were all living in a computer-programmed reality. These interview subjects, appearing as anthropomorphic animal avatars, invoke synchronicities, the Mandela Effect, generative adversarial networks, and exponential leaps in computer processing power to prove their theory about life being a full-scale massively multiplayer simulacrum. Punch-drunk on Philip K. Dick and the Wachowski siblings, these hyper-literate and compellingly articulate interview subjects are a heady mix of paranoia and narcissism. I am a real-life non-player character, one person moans. Another explains how his delusions led to him murdering his mother and father.

Its hard not to feel empathy for Aschers subjects when a documentary like Theo Anthonys All Light, Everywhere reinforces how mass surveillance is bending notions of objective reality. This damning meditation on the inevitable police state focuses almost entirely on Axon Industries, the company that invented Tasers and now holds 85% of the market share for body cameras. Their objective: to be the eyes and ears of law enforcement, create a vast archive of information and track everything with their proprietary lenses on people, cars, and drones. Their research could even create a eugenics-adjacent database to establish patterns of criminal behavior among certain peopleanticipating crime like the Precogs from Minority Report. What could possibly go wrong?

But the Sundance films which seemed the most up-to-date, the ones which really captured that sense of life out of balance, conveyed an almost apocalyptic sense of despair. Just look at Cryptozoo, Dash Shaws dazzling WTF animated adventure that feels like an animal-rights activist on hallucinogens stumbled into a marathon Dungeons and Dragons session. Gorgons, Griffins, and unicorns populate a world where black-market beast traffickers want to enslave them and secret-ops paramilitary want to weaponize them. The strangely earnest action movie never plays for laughs, and creates a weirdly touching portrait of sustained persecution in a hostile world where the strong exploit the weak, the feverishly exotic is always a threat, and no one is ever safe.

Not mincing words, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones named their movie How It Ends. The quirky existential dramedy imagines the last hours on earth before an asteroid obliterates all life. Today is certainly the fuck-it-all of days, declares Lister-Jones, who endeavors to make peace with as many people as possible, from her parents to her estranged best friend to the jilted ex-lover she never stopped loving. Bursting with motley socially-distanced cameos from Nick Kroll, Fred Armisen, Olivia Wilde, Bradley Whitford, Helen Hunt, and Pauly Shore, the Covid-era production feels shaggy, very off-the-cuff, and eagerly silly. Let whatever come, come, says a sex therapist. The underlying dread, though, is palpable. Its a film brimming with sweet sadness as well as a nagging restlessness that, in 2021, is all too familiar.

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Sundance: Predictably Unpredictable - Book and Film Globe

The Pointer Sisters performing in New York City in 1983, the year the group released its album Break Out, which included four top 10 hits. Robin Platzer / Images Press/Getty Images hide caption

The Pointer Sisters performing in New York City in 1983, the year the group released its album Break Out, which included four top 10 hits.

If you spun the dial of your AM/FM radio on any given day in the early 1980s, chances are you heard a Pointer Sisters' record. The group was in heavy rotation in a variety of formats whose playlists included Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen and the Human League or Patti LaBelle and Earth, Wind and Fire. The electro-pop sound of the Pointer Sisters' "Jump (For My Love)," "Automatic" or "Neutron Dance" dominated the charts during the first half of the decade. The popularity of these records rested in the accessibility of their lyrical content and melodic structure and the hypnotic nature of their rhythms. Anyone could sing "Jump for My Love" after hearing the chorus once; after "Neutron Dance" was featured prominently in Eddie Murphy's breakout film Beverly Hills Cop, it was regularly mixed into Jane Fonda-inspired aerobic workout routines. The sonic recipe that catapulted the Pointer Sisters into this chapter of their crossover success combined the gospel-infused vocals of soul music and the polyrhythmic, metronomic grooves of funk and disco with an instrumental palette that represented the era's new waves of experimentation. These songs partook of the musical technology and electronic sounds that permeated the music of artists like Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Kraftwerk. In a decade that came to be defined by economic uncertainty, the developing AIDS crisis and an expanding war on drugs that precipitated the ballooning of the prison industrial complex, the Pointer Sisters inspired audiences to dance, to love and to sing with abandonment. These songs promoted the reclamation of personal freedom and joy that was often overshadowed by the angst and anxiety of the decade.

"Automatic," "Jump (For My Love)" or "Slow Hand" would not be considered protest records in the way in which we view Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" or Aretha Franklin's "Respect," but they did represent a type of resistance culture that typifies the culture industry's engagement with BIPOC and women artists. From the very beginning the Pointer Sisters fought against genre categorization, racist marketing strategies and intellectual exploitation. Engagement in this type of resistance work against the music industry is one of the oldest and repeated narratives of popular music history. It informs the undercurrent of female empowerment, reinvention and sonic fluidity that has permeated much of popular music in the past three decades. The Pointer Sisters' embodiment of these ideals resonated with a generation of women during the '80s and is underscored in the music of contemporary girl groups like Destiny's Child and SWV and solo artists such as Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Beyonc, Taylor Swift and many others. Just as the sonic and physical freedom exemplified by these artists was shaped by the gender and race politics of the 1990s and early 2000s, the musical range and resistance politics of the Pointer Sisters bore the imprint of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The musical legacy of the Pointer Sisters has never fully been explored despite the sustained popularity of their music. Barack Obama's use of the 1973 recording "Yes We Can Can" during his 2008 Presidential campaign offered a subtle reminder of how the group contributed to the diverse soundtrack of Black Power Era America. The song re-entered my own consciousness when, during the height of the pandemic, it was featured during an episode of the BET series American Soul. Dramatizing the history of the influential television show Soul Train, American Soul features contemporary artists portraying the vast array of artists that appeared on the show. The episode titled "Satisfaction" centered on the Pointer Sisters' 1975 performance of "Yes We Can Can" and it immediately sent me to my CD collection, stereo and headphones.

In the months that followed I thought more and more about the song, its poignant message and its relevance to all that was taking place, especially the wave of social unrest that the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked last spring and summer. Bonnie Pointer's death last summer also prompted me to return back to this song and consider its significance. Why is it not discussed in the existing scholarship on Black protest music? What did it reflect in terms of the Pointer Sisters' proximity to the Black Power and Black Nationalist movements that emerged out of their hometown of Oakland during the late 1960s? How significant was the group in marrying the girl group aesthetic with Black Power-era protest culture?

The musicological history of the Pointer Sisters is both long and varied, largely because it consists of many different chapters that revolve around different combinations and pairings of biological siblings Anita (b. 1948), Bonnie (1950-2020), Ruth (b. 1946) and June (1953-2006). Raised in a strict religious household, the sisters (along with older brothers Aaron and Fritz) were influenced greatly by the political and cultural scene that developed in Oakland, Calif. in the decade following World War II. Like thousands of southern Blacks, the Pointer Sisters' parents, Elton and Sarah Pointer, migrated to the West Coast during the height of World War II. The complicated and layered racial consciousness that evolved out of the experiences of southern Blacks who migrated to urban cities during this period was strongly reflected in the group's sound identity.

Three musical genres underscored the Pointer Sisters' sound. The first was country music, which pointed to their family's Arkansas roots. The Pointer siblings, especially Anita and Bonnie, spent many of their summers in Prescott, Ark. with extended family members. During these moments they were exposed to the poverty and racism that exemplified much of Black southern life. But they also discovered the diverse soundscape of the region. "I only remember listening to one Arkansas radio station," Anita recalled years later. "All they played was country music: Hank Williams' 'Your Cheatin' Heart,' Tex Ritter's 'Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin'' and Willie Nelson's 'Funny How Time Slips Away.' The only time I heard Black artists was when I snuck out to the local juke joints and pressed my ear to the door .... To me it was all good music. With country, the short story format really resonated with me."

Anita and Bonnie's identification with country music resulted years later in the writing of the song "Fairytale." Released in 1974, the song had all of the hallmarks of the '70s honky tonk sound steel pedal guitar, fiddle, blues-influenced piano, raw vocals and lyrics that detailed heartbreak and unrequited love. It won the Grammy award for Country and Western Vocal Performance Group or Duo and became a lightning rod for the racial politics surrounding country music. When the Pointer Sisters were invited to perform at the Grand Old Opry in 1974, they were greeted by a country music fan base that was polarized over their race. Some protested the performance, while others embraced the group. Anita described the experience in her autobiography Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters' Family Story:

When we arrived at the Grand Old Opry, there were protesters carrying signs that said, 'Keep country, country!' It was a jarring sight for us. We had fought during the tumultuous civil rights era, which was still fresh in our minds. To see people protesting us because of our race was unsettling. As we took the stage a man screamed, "Hot damn. Them girls is black!" Fortunately, we won the music lovers over with our live performance. I could feel the energy in the room. The audience was obviously taking a 'wait and see' attitude. They expected us to earn their respect, and that's what we did. After we performed the song, the same man screamed again, "Sing it again, honey!" And we did. We sang it three more times that night.

The Pointer Sisters in 1974 (from left to right: June Pointer, Bonnie Pointer, Anita Pointer and Ruth Pointer), the year after the group released its debut album. Express/Getty Images hide caption

This experience and the crossover appeal of "Fairytale," serve as one example of how the Pointer Sisters during these early years challenged not only industry-based categorization of musical genre and concepts of racialized sound, but also the spatial politics of popular music that perpetuated a system of racial segregation that defined certain performance spaces as "white." Though perhaps not intentionally, the Pointer Sisters' appearance at the Opry represented how the liberation ideologies of the Black civil rights movement translated within the music industry. The presence of their Black voices and bodies in the "white" space of the Opry and the white soundscape of country was radical and similar to the disruptive nature of the types of embodied resistance (e.g. sit-ins, pray-ins, etc.) employed by activists during the direct action campaigns of the early 1960s.

The second component of the group's sound was gospel music, especially the gospel group aesthetic of the '50s and '60s. The dynamic that foregrounds both the Pointer Sisters' lead and background vocals were developed while singing in the junior choir at the West Oakland Church of God, where their father Elton Pointer served as pastor for many years. They also reflected the sisters' engagement with the Bay area's gospel music scene. By the late 1960s, the West Coast had become the epicenter of a new wave of music experimentation that would shift the sound and cultural context of Black sacred music during the latter part of the 20th century. Much of this experimentation took place during the historic "Midnight Musicales" held at The Ephesus Church of God in Christ in Oakland, where musicians Billy Preston, Edwin Hawkins and Andrae Crouch along with vocalists Tramaine Davis and Lynnette Hawkins fused Black hymnody and gospel song traditions with the funk aesthetic of James Brown and the rhythms of bossa nova, salsa and progressive rock. June and Bonnie's participation in the COGIC-sponsored Northern California Youth Choir, the ensemble that also produced the Edwin Hawkins Singers' best-selling and influential recording "Oh Happy Day" in 1969, is evidence of how the expansive musical circles that blurred denominational lines and practices during this period ultimately led to the emergence of what would be called Black contemporary gospel. Through these encounters the sisters enhanced the blending of their voices, developed an ear for intricate harmonies and an awareness of how to interpret and perform song lyrics in a manner that provoked a response from listeners.

The last core element of the Pointer Sisters' sound came from the vocal jazz group aesthetic popularized by The Andrews Sisters and the group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. The former was one of a number of female vocal jazz groups that were associated with the growing popularity of boogie woogie and swing during the 1940s. Their intricate harmonic arrangements fueled the popularity of such songs as "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy'' and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)." Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, a co-ed and interracial group consisting of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross, were significant in popularizing the technique of vocalese. Vocalese represented how jazz vocalists stretched beyond the conventions of the standard popular song repertory. Often confused with scat, vocalese differed in that it focused on intricate vocal improvisations that were based on pre-existing instrumental solos. Unlike scat, which is defined by its use of vocables, vocalese used identifiable words. The Pointer Sisters' connection to these groups went beyond mirroring their sounds. The Andrew Sisters and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross represented how jazz vocalists untethered their identities from the instrumentalists that provided accompaniment and advanced ways in which vocal jazz began to exemplify the notion of freedom and self-actualization that is projected in jazz through the improvised solo. This same spirit was personified in the Pointer Sisters' studio recordings and live performances.

After years of singing background for an array of artists that included Sylvester, Boz Skaggs, Esther Phillips, Cold Blood and Grace Slick, the Pointer Sisters entered the mainstream spotlight with their self-titled debut album in 1973. The Pointer Sisters embodied the radicalness and uncertainty that defined Nixon-era America. The songs were eclectic in style and origin ranging from covers of Jon Hendricks' bebop-influenced "Cloudburst" and Koko Taylor's gritty, dance-oriented blues song "Wang Dang Doodle" to original songs like "Jada," which reflected the type of group vocal jazz aesthetic popularized by the Andrews Sisters during the 1940s. It was one of many songs written by Anita and Bonnie during the group's early years. Noticeably absent from the recording was the formulaic pop/R&B sound that had propelled the girl group idiom during the 1960s. The cover art, which featured the four biological sisters Anita, Bonnie, June and Ruth dressed in vintage dresses and hats, also rejected the uniformity projected through the girl group. It was clear that the Pointer Sisters were different, and that difference was not just by chance or the product of a marketing strategy. It was emblematic of their self-actualized consciousness as Black women musicians coming of age in an America that was being shaped by social chaos and movements precipitating social change. That difference also married The Pointer Sisters' music to the ideological concepts of freedom that undergirded the liberation movements of the time and the repertory of message songs that served as the soundtrack of the Black Power Era.

The political and racial convictions that the Pointer Sisters personified developed out of the evolving consciousness of Oakland's Black community during the 1950s and 1960s. Surrounded by strong examples of Black achievement, the Pointer Sisters were also very aware of how segregation and racism limited black upward mobility. The sisters were geographically distant from the sit-ins, freedom rides and marches that stretched across the South in the early 1960s, but they shared with the young activists involved in those events a generational identity, worldview and radical spirit of resistance. This consciousness was fermented as Oakland became the nexus for the Black Nationalist and Black Power Movements in the late 1960s. The sisters, especially Anita, June and Bonnie, were connected to both movements through their older brother Fritz, who after attending UCLA and the University of Wisconsin, returned to Oakland where he established the Pan African Cultural Center in 1966. It was during this period that Anita, Bonnie and June shifted from being distant observers of the Black civil rights movement to active supporters. Much of their work was done through an organization that became known as the Black Panther Party of Northern California (BPPNC). Not to be mistaken with The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was founded in Oakland in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the BPPNC focused more on cultural nationalism than militant direct action. Anita describes the work of the group in her autobiography:

We [had] enough sense to know that black people were not the majority. So, we decided to make a difference using creativity. Music, painting, literature and film, dance, and sports would be our weapons. What comes out of the barrel of a gun is death. So, we were labeled "Cultural Nationalists" among other things.

The Black Panther Party of Northern California sponsored political rallies, voter registration drives, and cultural events. In 1966 the group sponsored the first Black Power and Arts Conference held in the state. Anita and the other sisters continued their engagement with the political scene of Oakland well into the 1970s. With this type of engagement with the Black liberation movements, it is not surprising that the Pointer Sisters' early albums would include message songs that aligned them with the liberation ideology and movement culture of the 1970s.

Now's the time for all good men to get together with one another.We got to iron out problems and iron out our quarrels and try to live as brothers.And try to find peace within without stepping on one another.And do respect the women of the world, remember you all had mothers.We've got to make this land a better land than the world in which we live.

The coupling of music and protest culture has a long and varied history in America, but in the late 1960s the blending of liberation ideology with Black popular music conventions gave birth to a new type of protest music the message song. The fragmentation of the Black civil rights movement into a number of different social movements in the late 1960s marked not only a significant shift in America's political culture, but also the different ways in which music functioned within those movements. By 1966, Dr. King had shifted the vision of his activism beyond the geopolitical boundaries of the South through the launching of his "End of the Slums" movement. While the singing of freedom songs still accompanied his marches through the streets of Chicago and Detroit, the protest music of the Black Power and Black Nationalists movements flowed primarily out of the popular music milieu of the late '60s.

The message song of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was unlike the freedom song of the direct-action campaigns in that it reflected the embracing of the ideology of Black-centered empowerment. This along with the anger and hope of the Black community were projected through Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," Jimmy Collier's "Burn Baby Burn," The Impressions' "We're a Winner," Aretha Franklin's "Respect" and James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud.)" The message song both documented and spoke directly to the tensions that existed in late '60s America. However, as the trauma and violence of the late '60s gave way to a new wave of violence and corruption in the early '70s, the rhetoric of message songs diversified and encompassed everything from new visions of Black empowerment to direct critiques of the Nixon administration and Black feminist ideology. Funk bands like Sly and the Family Stone and the JBs, soul artists Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder and male soul groups like The Temptations, the O'Jay's and Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes were prominent purveyors of these messages.

Noticeably absent from this message song phenomenon were the girl groups that dominated '60s popular culture. As Jacqueline Warwick outlines in her work Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s, these groups, which first appeared in the late 1950s, provided insights into the world of the prepubescent girl, who was excluded from the Cold-War era milieu of male-centered social rebellion and personal freedom. The 1960s marked the expansion of this aesthetic to a more mature, woman-centered perspective with the emergence of the Shirelles, the Marvelettes, the Ronettes and the Supremes, but singers who made up these groups still had a limited amount of agency over their music and images. Despite these restrictions, some of these groups, especially those associated with Motown (e.g. The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas and the Marvelettes) personified Dr. King's vision of Black mobility, freedom and racial integration. Even as the Black liberation movement gained momentum and fragmented into the variant social movements during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the material recorded by girl groups rarely shifted away from narratives of love and angst.

In a popular music scene that was heavily populated with girl groups, the Pointer Sisters stood out, as did Labelle, a trio that evolved from the traditional girl group into something more expansive. The differences between the Pointer Sisters, LaBelle and more conventional girl groups like Honey Cone or The Three Degrees were multifaceted.

First, they rejected the practice of building their sound around the juxtaposition of a single lead vocalist and the group. This custom was central to the sound identity of many of the '60s girl groups, especially The Supremes, the Ronettes, and Martha and the Vandellas. With the Pointer Sisters and Labelle, each member of the group sang both lead and background voices. This mirrored the liberation ideologies promoted by some grassroots movement organizations that rejected power hierarchies and placed the emphasis on the collective and not the individual. Their respective group sounds were based on the equal importance of each voice.

Secondly, they operated as autonomous groups that were not tethered to the musical vision of a particular male Svengali or production team, as were the Supremes with Motown chief Berry Gordy and songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland, The Ronettes with Phil Spector or The Shangri-Las with producer George "Shadow" Morton. And unlike ensembles like Love Unlimited, the female trio that complemented Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, or the Rick James-constructed Mary Jane Girls, the Pointer Sisters were not ancillary to a larger soul-funk collective.

A different approach behind the scenes helped these groups evolve as unique performers. Labelle's metamorphosis from the conventional girl group (Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles) to Afro-futuristic glam rock group of the 1970s was initiated through their work with producer and songwriter Vicki Wickham. The Pointer Sisters benefited greatly from the agency that small indie labels like Blue Thumb Records sometimes provided. The musical eclecticism heard on the group's early albums correlated with the diversity exhibited through Blue Thumb Records' business model. The label's roster during the 1970s included jazz bandleader/composer Sun Ra, disco/soul powerhouse Sylvester, rap progenitors The Last Poets and a host of other artists that stretched across musical genres.

The Pointer Sisters' albums during these early years were emblematic of a collaborative vision that was developed among the group, producer David Rubinson and a collective of instrumentalists who understood the strong, self-defined sound identity that these women had developed prior to signing with the label. They generally contained songs that were musically engaging and personally empowering. "The way I am is that I do what I like and then try to make it commercial. I don't take things that are already finished and package them," Rubinson recalled years later. "I love, as Frost said, to 'take the road less traveled.' Being another girl singing group did not interest me. It didn't interest them either. So I listened to the songs they had written ... and I introduced them to things I liked." One of the songs Rubinson and the Pointer Sisters' envisioned as a strong addition to their debut album was a cover of New Orleans-based songwriter/pianist Allen Toussaint's "Yes We Can." The song would not only give the Pointer Sisters their first hit record it would also link them to the paradigm of the Black Power era message song.

I know we can do it. I know that we can work it out.Yes We Can. Oh, yes we can can!

"Yes We Can" was a minor hit for singer Lee Dorsey in 1970, but The Pointer Sisters' version transformed this pop song with a subtle social justice message into "Yes We Can Can" a Black power era anthem structured in the form of the modern gospel song. The connection between the Pointer Sisters' rendition and the modern gospel song are many. First is the funk template that frames the identity of the song. It is rooted in a groove that encompasses a deep bass ostinato, chicken scratch guitar riff and solid rhythmic pocket created by the drums. The fact that this groove is allowed to marinate for 48 seconds before the vocals enter exemplifies how the instruments are important in setting the ethos in Black worship and sacred music practices. The marrying of funk grooves, a message of hope and transcendence and the vocal nuances of black sermonic traditions were at the heart of the contemporary gospel music approaches of artists like Edwin Hawkins, Walter Hawkins and Andrae Crouch during the '70s.

The second connection to the performance aesthetic of Black gospel music is found in lead singer Anita Pointer's deliberate and nuanced exegesis of song lyrics. This approach mirrors the cadential musicality or nuanced songlike speech patterns that permeate Black sermonic practices. This type of lyrical explication is heightened throughout the song by the juxtaposition of Anita's lead vocals with the intricate background vocals of Ruth (tenor), Bonnie (alto) and June (soprano). By the time the background vocalists enter with the harmonized phrase "we've got to make this land a better land than the world in which we live," it is clear that the Pointer Sisters have completely ushered listeners into the transformative space of the Black churches and the mass meetings that incubated the vision of social change and racial justice. The invocation of the communal energy of Black worship is further reinforced each time Anita soulfully exclaims "great gosh almighty" in response to the background's polyrhythmic and intricate assertions of "I know we can make it. I know darn well; we can work it out. Oh, yes, we can, I know we can, can. Yes, we can, can, why can't we? If we wanna, yes, we can, can."

The emotional peak of the communal worship experience conjured in "Yes We Can Can" occurs in the extended vamp, which makes up the final three minutes of the song. As scholars Guthrie Ramsey, David Brackett and Braxton Shelley have argued in their work, the extended vamp is not just a formal structural idea, but a ritualized moment through which collective and communal transcendence occurs. This is evident in "Yes We Can Can." As the background establishes the sequence of repeated phrases underlying the message of perseverance, Anita's ad-libs shift rhetorically from delivering the song's message to engaging the listener in the act of remembering and recounting their experiences through the act of testimony. Testifying through song not only provides moral-social guidance to the listener, but it also strengthens the feeling of the communal faith and transcendence between performer and listener. The discursive narrative of "Yes We Can Can" offered contemporary listeners assurance that despite the violence enacted against the liberation movements, the carnage and trauma experienced through the Vietnam War, and systemic the pervasive economic and racial disenfranchisement that together we could make it through.

Less than three years later, the group would record another message song, "You Gotta Believe," which extended beyond the coalition politics promoted through the lyrics of "Yes We Can Can" and reflected the influence of an emerging ideology of Black feminism.

You gotta believe in something! So why not believe in me?

"Yes We Can Can" gave the Pointer Sisters' their first taste of crossover success, charting just shy of the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 in 1973. The reception to "You Gotta Believe" was somewhat different. Part of this may be due to the fact that the song was initially released as part of the soundtrack of the movie Car Wash, in which the sisters appeared. It shows up on "best of" compilation albums but was not marketed heavily as a single. Another reason why this song might be lesser known is its thematic focus. The song explores, through the lens of Black women, the intra-racial tensions between Black men and women that were magnified by the exclusionary politics of the Black Nationalist and Black Power movements.

These tensions were not new, as the liberation ideologies that had propelled the Black civil rights struggle since the late 19th century consistently ignored the economic, social and reproductive struggles of Black women. This double standard bred the anger and hostility that sometimes underline interactions between Black men and Black women. As Audre Lorde asserted in the landmark text Sister Outsider, "Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision, it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. Anger is loaded with information and energy." Black expressive culture has long served as one of the central ways in which women have exhibited this anger and spoken directly about these tensions. At times this anger has been presented in nuanced ways that reflect Black women's sophisticated and complex uses of language. But in other instances, some artists have shunned the politics of respectability and overtly used their music to articulate and express the individual and collective anger of Black women.

Examples of this include early rock and roll hits like Big Mama Thorton's "Hound Dog" and Ruth Brown's "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" as well as Aretha Franklin's soul classic "Think." These struggles were also explored in the Black Power Era works of Black women writers such as Michelle Wallace's Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez and Ntozake Shange's choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. "You Gotta Believe" represented not only how these conversations were extended to the Black Power-era message song, but also how the Pointer Sisters married the girl group aesthetic with Black feminist ideology:

Tell me what have I done to you?To make you mean and treat me the way you do?Go on and wave your flag.Brotha start your revolutionI'm willing to let you do your thing.Tell me why are you blind when it comes to me?

The connective links between the song and the collective anger that pervaded the works of Black women writers, poets and intellectuals of this period was emphasized even further with the Pointer Sisters' performance of the song in the 1976 Blaxploitation movie Car Wash. They only appear in one scene as the Wilson Sisters, the female entourage of prosperity preacher Daddy Rich, played by comedian Richard Pryor. The scene embodies how Black women were often inserted in the theological and ideological rifts that existed between the assimilationist politics of Black Protestant Church and the revolutionary politics of Black Muslims and the Black Nationalist Movement. The triangular nature of this tension is played out in the interaction that takes place between the Wilson Sisters, Daddy Rich and Abdullah (Bill Duke), a radical Black revolutionary who expresses his disdain for Daddy Rich's pseudo-prosperity gospel and his manipulation of the community. In the midst of a heated exchange Abdullah calls Rich a pimp, to which the preacher responds by shifting the focus of the slur from what it indicates about the exploitative nature of his theology to how it disparages the Wilson Sisters' reputation and loyalty to him. Rather than engage Abdullah directly, Daddy Rich instructs the Wilson Sisters to "make him apologize." Their response is the song "You Gotta Believe."

Written and produced by Norman Whitfield, the song marries the psychedelic funk sound that saturated '70s Black films with the hard gospel girl group sound of the venerable ensembles like Davis Sisters and the Caravans. It is a sound that foreshadows the modern gospel girl group aesthetic of the Clark Sisters and the R&B girl groups of the 1990s. The Pointer Sisters' performance of anger through "You Gotta Believe" is not just sonic or rhetorical, but also in the movie is kinesthetic or reflected in the movement of their bodies. They gesture with their hands, roll their necks and at one point surround Abdullah, whose attempts to escape are impeded by his male co-workers. This scene and the inclusion of the song on the movie soundtrack are examples of how the complicated tensions that existed between Black men and women often challenged the legitimacy of the liberation narratives promoted through the Black Power era message song. The song made the R&B top 20 in 1977, but seemingly never resonated with a mainstream audience. But the legacy of the song is far-reaching as it foreshadows similar musical conversations in the music of post-civil rights generation artists like Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige.

The Pointer Sisters' engagement in musical activism extended into the '80s. In 1985, they joined the collective of artists who recorded the song "We Are the World," which raised funds to support relief efforts in Africa. Months later they allied with musicians who launched a boycott of Sun City, an entertainment venue in apartheid South Africa. Artists United Against Apartheid made their anti-apartheid stance globally known with the protest song "Sun City."

In recent years most of the media attention the Pointer Sisters have received has focused on their addictions and financial problems. However, the group's impact is far-reaching. They challenged the spatial politics of popular music and widened the spectrum of spaces that Black bodies and Black voices were seen and heard during the 1970s and 1980s. The freedom they embodied through the eclectic repertory of their early albums and their image provided a template that was embraced by the R&B, gospel and pop music girl groups that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The alignment of their music with liberation ideologies and social movements is being replicated by a new generation of female artists. Just listen to The Chicks, H.E.R., Beyonc, Rhiannon Giddens or Lauryn Hill. "Yes We Can Can" and "You Gotta Believe" were not just anthems that spoke to the protest culture of a not so distance past they serve as a significant part of a larger Black feminist manifesto in music that represents how Black women speak themselves into larger narratives of liberation and freedom.

Originally posted here:

You Gotta Believe In Something: The Pointer Sisters' Pursuit Of Liberation - NPR

Kristen Noel Crawley wants Black women to not just lean in to the beauty industry, she wants them to disrupt it entirely.

Starting last year, the KNC Beauty founder, known for her cult-favorite lip, eye, and face masks, and essential Supa Balms, partnered with Revlon to provide completely free virtual educational courses for entrepreneurial Black women venturing into the highly competitiveyet lucrativebeauty industry. Aptly titled KNC School of Beauty, Crawley hosts a series of panels and discussions featuring the beauty world's most influential trailblazers in the hair, makeup, skin care, and wellness industries. The curriculum is crafted to empower budding entrepreneurs with invaluable insider advice about building a beauty business. Attendees will also have a chance to receive a $10,000 grant courtesy of Revlon for their soon-to-be brands.

For Crawley, the concept of the beauty school is centered on her firm belief that every industrynot just beautyshould believe and invest in the inherent power and cultural influence of Black women. By sharing her personal insight of creating her own brand from the ground up, as well as the experiences from her fellow industry colleagues, Crawley hopes to inspire a new generation of Black women in beauty to bet on themselves.

Today, the KNC School of Beauty returns with a dynamic lineup of girl bosses, including Brooke DeVard, Olamide Olowe, Karen Young, and Chandra Coleman Harris, with discussions hosted by Crawley herself. Below, we speak with the beauty founder about how her school came to be and how she hopes to see Black women shape the industry from this moment forward.

I was inspired to create KNC School of Beauty at a time when I felt our community needed advice and empowerment from within. It was at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement this past summer that I decided to develop this initiative further and connect with other successful Black female entrepreneurs at the top of the beauty industry. I wanted to secure a platform for us to speak on the trials and tribulations of building a business within a market that is discriminatory towards both women and people of color. I felt there was an audience here that could use the advice we have to impart to the next generation of budding entrepreneurs and really turn it into action.

I've been so thankful to my longtime partner, Revlon, who absolutely stepped up to the plate and has been a huge support from the beginning. They've provided a 10K grant as part of the prizes for each of our School of Beauty sessions, and it's been such a major cornerstone in the opportunities we're able to provide here. I want other Black women to know that they can build something larger than themselves that will leave a legacy for generations to come.

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I feel like Black women have been overlooked in the beauty market because we haven't necessarily always been the standard of beauty society strives toward. In ad campaigns and on products, white women have long been the focal point of beauty and, therefore, the consumer most prominently targeted. I think that over time, however, companies have started to see the investment Black women make in their beauty regiments and can now feel our influence in the market when it comes to trends and top products. Now that our consumer power has grown, so has our representation within the industry both behind the scenes and as the face of beauty for many leading brands.

I know that as women we need to be prepared for those people who are always going to try and change our minds or steer us in a different direction, thinking that we can't strategize or invest in ourselves 100 percent. When walking into a room, you have to be steadfast in your vision for yourself as an entrepreneur and hold onto the goals you have for your business. Others would rather try and shape us to fit their mold as opposed to the one we want to create for ourselves and for our community. It's important to persevere as women in this industry, because we truly are the ones who hold all the buying and selling power. Especially as Black women, our voices and ideas matter, and we shouldn't have to consistently prove ourselves in a space where we make the greatest impact.

Through the conversations I've had as a part of KNC School of Beauty, I've grown to admire so much all of the women who have joined me in our various sessions to impart their wisdom and share their personal stories of success and failure. I want to shout-out Nancy Twine of Briogeo, Melissa Butler of the The Lip Bar, Trinity Mouzon [Wofford] of Golde, Shontay Lundy of Black Girl Sunscreen, Jamika Martin of Rosen Skincare, and Beatrice Dixon of Honey Pot, who have all been a part of the School of Beauty and are making major strides in our industry.

For our third session on February 9, we'll be introducing Brooke DeVard of the Naked Beauty podcast, Olamide Olowe of My Topicals skincare, Karen Young of OUI the People, and Chandra Coleman Harris from our School of Beauty partner, Revlon. I'm so excited for the advice that will be shared, because I personally learn an immense amount myself and am always blown away by the depth of our conversations. Women like these are truly the ones that have inspired me all along in my journey to build KNC Beauty and grow it into what it is today.

It feels so empowering to be a Black woman finding success in this business, and I think this is just the beginning for a lot of other girls out there who have the same dreams I did.

I think the biggest misconception is that people tend to believe Black-owned brands are developing products solely for Black women or people of color, and not the full array of beauty consumers out there. While, of course, some lines cater more to the specific needs of Black women in regards to hair and skincare, I feel that many Black entrepreneurs want to create products that can be appreciated by all beauty enthusiasts. I have always said that KNC Beauty is for everyone, and I want to maintain that ethos with each of the products I release. I think it's important to be inclusive, and I know our collective outlook on beauty could be much better with this approach.

I think we're headed to the top! Matter of fact, I know that we have a place in this industry, and I can see our influence growing every day. Our look and our features are so sought after within the world of beauty now, and there's no denying that we have something everyone wants. It feels so empowering to be a Black woman finding success in this business, and I think this is just the beginning for a lot of other girls out there who have the same dreams I did. I think that the KNC School of Beauty speaks to the legacy that can be made if we support one another and make our community's impact greater.

You can register for KNC School of Beauty here.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Kristen Noel Crawley Is Helping Black Women Disrupt the Beauty Industry - HarpersBAZAAR.com

While remote working has brought about flexibility in work schedules and helped improve employee productivity, it has no doubt brought on its own set of challenges too - such as a lack of work-life balance.In this final segment of a two-part special feature, Priya Sunil speaks to nine leaders across industries on what remote working means for their workforce, and if they see it as a permanent fixture of the future.Are you for or against remote working, and if so, in what format?

Cloris Gu, HR Director, Eaton East Asia

Eaton has been an advocate for remote working for some time. We understand some employees would require flexible working arrangements due to non-work commitments. We want to ensure were able to support them where possible so theyre able to better balance their work and personal responsibilities efficiently.

Susan Otto, Chief People Officer, BlackLine

We are mainly proponents of remote working. Our employees have shown incredible resilience and productivity ever since weve had to implement office-wide work from home arrangements. Weve adapted to remote working well given the nature of our industry where digitalisation and automation are at the core of our business. However, we understand different industries/businesses might take to it differently.

Jessica Simpson, Human Resources Director, Amgen Singapore Manufacturing

The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed Amgen to transcend boundaries and experiment with new ways of working while ensuring that health, safety and the well-being of our staff remain top priority. Over the past year, we have made huge strides into an area of work flexibility that we never thought was possible in our bio-manufacturing industry and have successfully adapted to the realities of work-from- home, making remote working arrangements more effective and productive than ever.

Technology lies at the heart of the future of work. That said, we are cognizantsome industries such as bio-manufacturing could never fully go remote at least for now - because some processes would still require workers to collaborate in the same place or to conduct critical work in a specific location.

So, while remote working appears to be here to stay since it is workable for many roles and provides staff with a much-needed ability to better harmonise between workand personal demands, embedding this as part of our new normal will require flexibility on the part of all workers and for all to learn how to work in a different way to ensure business outcomes are not compromised.

Going forward, the future of work is creative, flexible and human. Companies are expected to increasingly adopt a hybrid style of working that balances remote and non-remote work to support the individualized needs of our employees. There is not a one-size-fits-all model and this will take time for our leaders to learn how to be agile and flexible in the way they approach leading teams with this hybrid approach. This model worked well for Amgen in the midst of the pandemic and has enabled us to continue delivering critical medicines for our patients without compromising productivity - all while providing the ability for greater work life harmony for our staff.

With the advent of advanced manufacturing and digital transformation, manufacturing jobs of the future will continue to get redefined. In time to come, we can envision manufacturing processes to be further automated such that workers can control the systems from remote locations, providing opportunities for even further flexibility.

Helen Snowball, Chief Human Resources Officer, JLL Asia Pacific

At JLL, weve always believed in flexible working. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, we had schemes in place such as the Gradual Return to Work Programme to allow employees to ease back to work after a period of leave.

There is no doubt were able to work efficiently and effectively remotely. But what weve also recognised is that the extensive work-from-home period leads to a lack of boundaries between work and personal life.

This is the time for corporates to reimagine remote working. Beyond merely instituting a hybrid or flexible work model where some time is spent in the office and other days at home, we should use this opportunity to create a better employee experience so that employees feel connected to their organisations and colleagues whether theyre at work or at home.

One way could be a building a virtual toolkit where employees can log on to a single platform for all their resources and to better understand their organisation instead of searching through multiple websites since there are less face-to-face opportunities to get these answers.

Vincent Goh, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan, CyberArk

The need to pivot to remote working quickly has accelerated digital transformation in both CyberArk and our customer base, so in many ways I believe that remote working has forced businesses in the region to tap into the potential technology brings; in order to adapt and survive there has been a real impetus to make changes that would previously have taken years, and this is refreshing. As CyberArk is a cyber security business, so we see the other side as well. Businesses that rushed into onboarding new applications and services face a different set of cybersecurity challenges.

Remote working means that each one of us is now a potential entry point into the organisation for attackers, so risks have now increased, and organisations have become more vulnerable to cyberattacks than ever.

Cybercriminals are playing on peoples fears around Covid-19 to conduct social-engineering based attacks. So my caveat for remote working for organisations is that it can be very positive in many ways, but it must also be done in such a way that doesnt place the organisation at risk.

Jeannie Wong, Director of Human Resources, Thales in Singapore & South East Asia

As a HR leader, I believe that an efficient workplace is all about maintaining a good balance, and remote working fits in this picture as long as efficiency and results are not compromised.

Thales adapted quickly to remote working, and the Group has also introduced a global Smart Working initiative where each business unit has the ability to adopt a hybrid work model, based around decentralising decisions and empowering managers to decide how best to organise their teams. In South East Asia, the focus lies on creating collaborative workspaces thats based on trust and results.

June Chui, HR Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage

Definitely for. Even before the pandemic, our employees were able to work remotely, with the agreement of their managers, even if we have a physical office space in the employee's location. As a global company with work teams dispersed across regions and collaboration meetings spanning different time zones, remote working enables our employees to accommodate these early mornings and late-night calls while balancing commitments in our personal lives.

Juliana Ang, Chief Human Resources Officer, NTUC Income

The onset of the Circuit Breaker provided the impetus for us to review our working arrangement at Income. In Q3 last year, we have reviewed all the work requirements for our staff and confirmed that 85% of the roles are able to work from home. As such, since Q4 last year, we have implemented a flexible work arrangement where staff who are eligible to work from home could opt to do so on a permanent basis.

Currently, employees are on split team basis and have the flexibility to either return to the physical workspace during their assigned week, or continue to work from home. It has served us well so far, and we continue to enjoy high levels of staff collaboration and productivity.

Beyond just remote working, the key intent of implementing the work-from-home policy is part of the work culture that we want to build, so that Income stays agile and flexible to adopt and embrace changes rapidly as well as stay relevant in an ever-evolving operating landscape.

Niharica Sand, HR Director, REDHILL

Leading the HR practice and developing policies at a global organisation, I am completely for remote working. Since remote working arrangements kicked in since March last year, the HR team at REDHILL have been taking regular pulse surveys and one-on-one check-ins with all our employees across Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East. These regular surveys help us to identify and assess the challenges and needs of our employees, so that we can address and adjust working arrangements in an efficient manner.

At REDHILL, the hybrid format has been the most successful for our organisation thus far. In a hybrid work arrangement, our employees can choose to work in the office (if local regulations permits) or work from home. Having this flexibility allows teams to come in the office once or twice a week to meet their teammates and have discussions to facilitate collaboration and creative thinking. It also allows working parents and interns to work around their own school commitments and shape their own schedules. We find that face-to-face meetings are still more effective for brainstorming, idea generation and group discussions.

We strongly encourage R&R; Responsibility & Reward, where each employee is responsible for their work, and thus rewarded with the flexibility to manage their time and place of work. Looking at the workforce of the future, such policies help attract and retain strong talent.

Pros

Remote working arrangement supports the agile way of working, while also keeping our customers and employees safe at all times. This enables us to drive bottom-up innovation, build collaboration across teams and cultivate an open mindset, so as to sharpen our competitive edge. A conducive work environment and culture can empower staff to be more self-directed.

Acquiring such a mindset is especially important in keeping ourselves motivated and fulfilled at work. One of the ways we promote agile ways of working across Income is by exposing employees to regular personal development through immersive trainings such as Design Thinking workshops.

Cons

However, remote working also brings about some challenges, one of which is the lack of daily face-to-face social interactions which we would normally expect in a regular office setting. It cannot be replaced but we can work around it and still have productive meetings and discussions virtually with the use of technology, open communication and coordination. Team and project meetings within safe distancing measures are also actively encouraged, when it makes it more productive for work to be done together.

Vincent Goh, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan, CyberArk

Pros

It has forced us all to make the effort to interact with the people we need to connect with in a different way. An example would be trade show attendance.

Clearly, getting thousands of people in a room is not possible currently and may not be for some time. So it has forced an accelerated shift to digital; to educate, inform and project what CyberArk can do for customers in a way that is vastly different.

Cons

We, at CyberArk are a very people-driven team; its part of our DNA to meet in person to plan, celebrate, and of course to socialise.

Face-to-face interactions have been central to what the company is about. The bonds we have with our colleagues, customers and partners are strong and have survived the pandemic, and flexible working will be part of life going forward.So while I wouldnt say it hasnt worked, we certainly welcome the promise of the upcoming year in terms of enabling more safe physical interaction.

Jeannie Wong, Director of Human Resources, Thales in Singapore & South East Asia

Pros

Remote working implies a certain shift of autonomy back into the hands of the employees so there has to be an implicit level of trust between managers and their people. The approach sees a new way of working which is more technology-immersive, flexible and results-oriented. We have seen teams organise themselves in the best way possible to serve our customers and keep to their commitments, with employees being more focused on high-quality outputs and being more outcome-driven.

Managers have also adjusted expectations to exclude perpetual presenteeism and to focus on whats really important improving collective productivity so we can better deliver to our customers and stakeholders.

Cons

While it has its benefits, remote working is not possible for all departments and all types of work. Thales is involved across a very diverse spectrum of businesses, which include essential services for key sectors like aerospace and rail transportation. Our colleagues in these business units work on industrial and operational sites that require them to be on-premise daily.

Due to the high level of confidentiality required by many of our projects, we also have teams who need to access secured and encrypted servers and other equipment which are only available at our secure sites. For a company like ours, there is no one-size-fits-all solution and the key lies again in empowering our managers to make the best arrangements for their teams to function effectively.

Helen Snowball, Chief Human Resources Officer, JLL Asia Pacific

Pros

Its helped to shift mindsets and accelerate the embracing of technology. Real estate is still largely a traditional industry, but at JLL, we have invested in the best technology tools for our employees to stay connected and collaborative.

Remote working has also intensified the sense of caring and collaboration at JLL.

For instance, our employees in various offices spontaneously set up fitness groups to encourage each other to stay healthy and active while under lockdowns. Other teams rallied together to donate to the less fortunate in their local communities.

Id say remote working boosts the significance of culture and teamwork in JLL. It gives us greater motivation to continue to nurture these aspects even though we may not spend so much time physically together.

Cons

Its clear that there is a mental toll that comes with working from home where employees juggle multiple responsibilities and there is no clear 'switch off' mode. From an HR point of view, we can do more in terms of training and empowering leaders to manage people remotely.

There will be questions around how line managers can feel comfortable and supported with flexible arrangements. How do you communicate expectations and show accountability? Can you build corporate culture and ensure successful on-boarding of new hires remotely?

These are tricky issues to navigate. It could be some time before companies and their HR teams create a sustainable and effective framework for this.

Susan Otto, Chief People Officer, BlackLine

Pros

Most of our employees were able to experience increased productivity due to the elimination of commute time. Many have also shared an improvement in their work-life balance as theyre able to better juggle their personal and work commitments. Overall, the transition to remote working has been manageable for us. However, we understand not everyones home environment is conducive to remote work. Thus, we work closely with the management and team managers to ensure everyone has the resources and support they need as we continue with mass remote work for some time.

Cons

We do miss the organic and casual interactions which can happen in the office. Its not possible to just bump into a colleague on WebEx or Zoom and strike a conversation. While there are tools for collaboration such as using an online whiteboard, its still a different experience compared to doing so in-person. Hence, we do our best to organiseonline gatherings which are more casual in nature such as games sessions when possible so colleagues have additional avenues to connect.

Cloris Gu, HR Director, Eaton East Asia

Pros

Even prior to COVID-19, we had remote working practices to provide employees with the flexibility and support they need to manage their professional and personal commitments efficiently. With no signs to the end of the pandemic just yet, remote working remains essential in helping us ensure the physical safety of our employees. Supplemented with suitable virtual tools and technologies, it also enables our teams to maintain productivity and continuity.

Cons

Humans are by nature gregarious animals - we long for social interactions. While virtual engagement will never go away, it will never replace the value of genuine face-to-face communication either.

Looking beyond corporations like Eaton, there are many who work in service industries that rely on the existence of corporations and office buildings. These individuals livelihoods have been severely impacted with the sudden and mass implementation of remote working during COVID.

As a society, we are all interconnected and are morally obligated to support each other where possible as we continue on the road to recovery.

Niharica Sand, HR Director, REDHILL

Pros

The most important benefit of remote work has been the realisation and its acceptance as a legitimate alternative to being in an office. This shift in working habits has enabled us to empower every individual to focus on what truly matters to them, and the ability to effectively balance their professional and personal lives.

As an organisation, we have witnessed two key benefits to our bottom line: an increase in employee engagement leading to higher productivity, and sprinkled attendance has led to cost reductions.

Employee engagement has significantly improved as a result of conscious efforts to stay engaged with teams during lockdown. We were also able to identify and address internal communication blind-spots. Such efforts have resulted in a reduction in attrition rates while enabling us to attract great talent.

As an organisation, we continue to leverage on multiple digital platforms and communication tools to support our staff to stay productive and happy while they work. Overall remote working has been hugely beneficial for us.

Cons

One major pain point is the inability to have synchronous communication. As every discussion is scheduled in advance, in the creative field, this can hamper workflow. It is not easy to brainstorm and be creative on schedule. The ability to tap your colleague on their shoulder, walk over to their desk, or just join in is greatly reduced. Socialising becomes forced and the conversation flow is no longer organic.

Secondly, performance evaluations are more difficult to assess. Considering most employees did not have a flexible work arrangement before the COVID-19 pandemic, people needed a few months adapting to over-communication, scheduled discussions and working in isolation. Generally, working remotely makes it more difficult to fairly assess each team members contribution and capability.

Data security risk is also a factor, especially for companies that do not have secure devices for their employees. With data the mantra of today, the security of ones IP is of utmost importance.

June Chui, HR Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage

Pros

It has helped in enabling our employees to better balance their work and home lives and we've seen an improvement in employee morale with little impact on productivity. We've seen that remote working also promotes trust and empowerment, as the focus is on delivering business outcomes as opposed to being "seen" in the office.

Cons

While we ourselves have not seen this directly, one possible downside is that the employee doesn't feel a strong bond with the company. Pre-pandemic, our employees were used to mix remote working with coming to the office. Even for our employees who work in locations with no physical offices, we encourage them to occasionally travel to a location with an office so they can build that bond. In this period of lockdown, we're overcoming this by encouraging our managers and their team members to over-communicate on goals, delivery commitments and feedback.

Managing a remote team is challenging and we provide many tools and resources to our people managers to be conscious of the different aspects including the unconscious bias against team members they may see more often face to face vis-a-vis remote team members.

Jessica Simpson, Human Resources Director, Amgen Singapore Manufacturing

Original post:

Is remote working really the future? Leaders from Amgen, Eaton, JLL and more weigh in - Human Resources Online

Launched in 2012, YourStory's Book Review section features over 280 titles on creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation. See also our related columns The Turning Point, Techie Tuesdays, and Storybites.

Innovation through a combination of perspectives and cultures can spawn new types of value creation. Methods, theories, and stories of fusion innovation in action are presented in the must-read book Innovation Through Fusion: Combining Innovative Ideas to Create New Solutions by CJ Meadows.

This hefty 500-page book profiles 30 world-class innovators with multiple backgrounds. Each inspiring story is based on in-depth interviews with innovators as well as their colleagues and family members, with links to short videos.

Nuclear fusion produces massive energy from combining two nuclei similarly, cross-disciplinary fusion can lead to new types of offerings, organisations and business models. The book combines academic research with inspirational storytelling to illustrate these processes.

CJ Meadows is Director of i2i, the Innovation and Insights Center of SP Jain School of Global Management in Singapore. She has a doctorate in business administration and IT from Harvard Business School, and has over 20 years of international experience as an entrepreneur and coach. She also founded The Tiger Center, a social enterprise in India.

Here are my key takeaways from the 39 chapters in this compelling book, summarised as well in the table below. See also my reviews of the related books The Seven Principles of Complete Co-creation, Cross-Industry Innovation, The Art of Noticing, Non-Obvious Trends, The Serendipity Mindset, and The Creative Thinking Handbook.

The author defines a fusioneer as one who innovates across boundaries between industry, field, country, or social class. They are interdisciplinary creators, lateral innovators, borderless free-thinkers, and boundary-crossing integrators.

Fusioneers have T-shaped personalities, and are sometimes regarded as oddballs. They cross-fertilise ideas, synthesise models, and create mash-ups at intersections of different fields. Through the centuries, opportunities for creativity have mushroomed by mixing and marrying ideas from different industries and countries, and we are now in a new renaissance, the author explains.

A fusioneer is outwardly open. They are highly aware, great listeners, and observant noticers. They are also inwardly open, and are deeply aware of their own interests and talents while excelling in self-management, work-life integration and spiritual reflection as well.

A fusioneer develops an ongoing collection of ideas, people, experiences, skills, certifications and degrees for the workshop of the mind, the author evocatively explains. To sense changes in the world, the fusioneer cultivates a unique lens without prejudice, and is able to see, map and analyse things others miss.

A fusioneer does not just make choices between alternatives but combines or fuses approaches. They deconstruct and re-assemble, and the combination leads to new value creation.

A fusioneer embodies the different types of empathy: emotional, cognitive, and compassionate. They sense and resonate with others emotions, can understand their point of view, and move to action.

Of the 30 fusion innovators profiled, most of them spent six months or more in multiple nations, the author observes. Crossing international boundaries helps them cross other boundaries between cultures and disciplines as well, the author explains.

They have mental diversity irrespective of advanced degrees, and dont just do jobs but create jobs. They are self-directed and driven by inner motivation rather than external incentives.

Many of these facets were discovered by the author using a tool called Multicultural Personality Assessment. An outstanding table in the book (Table 3.1) summarises the innovators international experience, organisations, achievements, and impact.

The bulk of the book features illustrated stories of 30 fusioneers, with personal and professional journeys. Unfortunately, some of the figures are generic photo-stock images and there is a disconnect between the captions, image, and chapter text. Perhaps leaving some images without captions may have helped instead.

References for each chapter are drawn from books, TED talks, HBR, and academic journals like Journal of Experimental Psychology and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It would have been great to have an integrated reference section at the end of the book, pulling all these resources together.

Some of the referenced books have been reviewed by YourStory as well, such as Dual Transformation, Gamechangers, and Innovators DNA. See also our reviews of Creative Edge and Introvert Entrepreneur.

Samuel Gan is a scientist, product developer and educator, who converts some of his knowledge into mobile apps for mass audiences (e.g. DNAapp, VibraTilt). The creative problem solver also co-founded an academic journal on mobile apps, and likes to link fieldwork with labs.

Jawahar Kanjilal pioneered a number of mobile features during his Nokia days in India, such as the ringtone deal for Saare Jahan Se Accha, mobile insurance, Visual Radio, and Life Tools for rural users.

Matthew Rooda, Founder of the aptly-named SwineTech (Fitbit on a pig), developed and combined expertise in agriculture, medicine and engineering to solve the problems of pig breeders.

Robest Young has won the title Malaysias National Inventor of the Year, with a string of products to solve daily problems. The tinkerer has come up with mosquito glue (to attract and kill them, rather than repel them), micro-fertilisers, combined sink-cistern, smartphone accessories for the blind, and rubber stamp technology inspired by the printing industry.

Sister Cyril Mooney was Principal of the Loreto Sealdah School in Kolkata. She extended the private schools facilities for underprivileged and disabled children, combining educational and social causes with a humanitarian mission.

Jack Sim is a serial and social entrepreneur in areas like sanitation, founding the Restroom Association in Singapore, the World Toilet Summit, and BoP Hub accelerator. He was so talkative as a child that he would often be made to stand outside the class (outstanding student, he jokes).

Margaret Connors extended the practice of urban farming as a livelihood generator (green collar labour) for poor communities and food security for neighbourhoods in the US. She founded City Growers and the Urban Farming Institute.

Raffi Rembrand is CTO of BioHug Technologies and an expert in autism diagnosis, blending audiology and touch technology. His inner journey is shaped by his own experience as a parent of an autistic child.

Indian expat Krish Krishnan founded strategy consultancy Jeiva International, and is an advisor to healthcare firm ImmunoHeal. He developed technology for over-clothing breast cancer detection.

Ravi Kumar Banda founded XCyton diagnostics to combine bacterial and viral testing in an affordable manner for broader social benefit. Scientist Adeline Sim specialises in computational structural biology at the Bioinformatics Institute in Singapore.

Drawing on his international and multi-disciplinary background, Livio Valenti founded Vaxess Technologies, which created vaccines that were embedded in silk protein fibres. Med-tech developer Chin Sau Yin is President of Biotech Connection Singapore, and fuses polymer science with healthcare technologies.

Melissa Kwee is a social entrepreneur, blending business with social causes and philanthropy. She has worked on improving the lives of imprisoned mothers and their children. This polymath also served as President of UN Women Singapore, and co-founded One Degree Asia and the Halogen Foundation.

Grace Sai combined co-working spaces, mentorship networks, and events for business and social causes. She founded Books for Hope as a library network in rural Indonesia, and launched Impact Hub in Singapore.

Rick Smolan nurtured his childhood passion for photography and worked at Time, National Geographic and Life magazines. He combined this skill with an entrepreneurial flair and launched bestseller books like A Day in the Life series (Australia, Medicine, One Digital Day, Big Data). He excelled in sensing and visualisation emotion and finding corporate sponsors for his projects by sensing their needs and aspirations.

Ted Saad, of Palestinian heritage, made a mark in the US by combining multiple media businesses; the Emmy Award winner also branched out into wellness products. Chen Yi spent years doing hard labour during the Culture Revolution in China, but emigrated to the US and became a successful composer blending Chinese and Western classical music.

George Kolovos was an early e-commerce pioneer (MenuLog), and expanded into sports and the Quad Caf business as well. Chef Ryan Clift combines multiple cuisines and sciences into his series of restaurants; he began as a dishwasher, and insists that all staff be respected.

Jack Cowin spotted a long line outside a restaurant, which sparked him to launch a series of fast-food restaurants in Australia. He also launched a tourism business for tourists to climb atop Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Arun Abey is of Indian and Sri Lankan origin, and his experience with hardship as an immigrant in Australia sensitised him to the empowerment of financial services. He fused macro- and micro-economic theory with innovative business models in his company, Ipac Securities.

Karen Stephenson, a pioneer in organisational social network analysis and corporate anthropology, combined perspectives from quantum physics, ethnology, mathematical modelling, and management consulting. The founder of Netform Resources, she got an epiphany while watching people movement patterns from an upstairs office on the mezzanine floor.

Mihnea Moldoveanu founded Redline in the early Internet days, and made a mark in the ADSL modem space. He later founded the Centre for Integrative Thinking at the University of Toronto.

Parag Khanna is a founder (Factotum), strategy advisor (Hybrid Reality), author (Connectography) and policy specialist (National University of Singapore). He blends perspectives from technology, geography, and government.

Integrative thinker Edy Greenblatt fuses body and mind by combining dance, ethnology and executive coaching. She helps others focus on the integrated self and integrated team. Sean Leas combined his knowledge of intercultural contexts and corporate environments to become an expert in running international joint ventures.

Sports scientist Kenneth Graham leveraged statistical insights to perfect his dives, winning the best Olympic scores. He coaches across sports disciplines, viewing athletic performances from different perspectives. He also invented a tumbling machine for coaches to better analyse divers and gymnasts.

Growing up as a Turkish immigrant in Austria, Asil Toksal founded Energy Biodiesel, but also expanded into digital media and spirituality. He nurtured a love for experimenting,

Tal ben Shahar is Founder of Potentialife, a leadership development programme. His work combines education, wellbeing, and personal happiness, for children as well as professionals.

The stories above are inspiring as well as informative. The author shows how they offer lessons such as the importance of asking what as well as what if questions, why and why not. Seemingly random connections can actually be useful in the long run.

The fusioneer is hyper-aware with a strong sense of intuition, genuine interest, and constant curiosity. They are voracious and insatiable readers and absorb ideas like a sponge, thus learning broadly and deeply. Greater exposure leads to more dots to connect and patterns to emerge.

Some of them can spot deeper patterns underlying arts and science, and can filter diverse information and take decisions to act upon them. Some innovators also toss out ideas on social media for feedback (idea grenades).

They are non-judgmental and dont close off ideas too early, before their potential has been fully explored. As idea collectors, they do not discard potentially useful ideas. Once they catch a dream, they pass it on, the author evocatively describes.

They can envision and extrapolate from the present. Fusioneers have psychological flexibility, and are not constrained by boxes of the existing convention they either dont see them, or are aware of them but know how to breach them.

They collect and connect dots, and appreciate the fuzziness and grey areas in cross-disciplinary thinking and collaboration. The fusioneer can communicate using analogies and metaphors to figuratively introduce emerging concepts.

They have an innate ability to learn, and some of them were gifted as children while others were even seen as problem children for some time, the author observes. Rather than having failed in school, it was school that failed some of them, she adds.

They withstood criticism from naysayers and detractors in their innovation journeys. They are self-driven and strong-willed. Some are good intellectual sparring partners and even provocateurs; they enjoy idea jam sessions.

The innovators passion for solving problems and understanding customers helps see what others dont. They also probe for a new or better way to solve problems. Many of them have additional roles as teachers or mentors, which are good ways to learn as well. Working with youth can keep the mind creative and spirit young.

The fusioneer combines desire with drive in the bias to action, and helps others by solving their problems. They dont just find problems but care enough to solve them.

They connect ideas as well as people in their journey, and are articulate and authentic in communication. They clarify ideas by drawing, visualisation and extensive note-taking. They have perseverance and take risks, but are open to learning from failure, which they regard as lessons to be repurposed.

They have a creative sense of play and can be almost child-like in this manner. Some of them move quickly from one idea to another, handing them over to others. Others work on multiple projects at the same time. Some get bored with details and move on.

They surround themselves with diverse creative communities for ideation and co-creation. They are dreamers but also help others dream. They can sense other peoples skills and energy flows in groups, and are open to partnering.

Fusioneers are catalysts and mobilisers, and want to live a useful life. They enlist, inspire and empower teams for their causes. They bring their whole self to work, and come across more as conductors than generals. They are a ball of contagious energy and nurture creativity among the people they work with.

The fusioneer blends different influences while also respecting the original sources. They are skilled in pattern recognition and trend spotting, and are good organisers and fixers. Some of them have had experiences as a minority, which makes them sensitive to the issues of other minorities.

At the same time, they also reserve space and time for personal reflection through meditation or swimming and taking long walks (thinkwalking). Such techniques even during boring activities help incubate, germinate, ferment and simmer ideas.

Openness can also create discomfort, dissonance, tension, confusion, and information overload. Too much empathy can lead to burnout and loss of productivity, the author cautions. It is therefore important to know what are the drivers and boundaries of ones inner happiness.

It is not just organisational diversity, but social and mental diversity that are important for tomorrows leaders, the author emphasises. Creative capital is as useful as social capital. This also calls for being comfortable in difficult conversations during the synthesis of intelligence across diverse communities and cultures.

Fusion is different from living two lives or having diverse interests, the author clarifies. For example, TS Eliot was a poet and banker, and Franz Kafka was an insurance clerk and writer but they kept these interests separate.

Fusion calls for generation, not just connecting. Creativity draws from four roles: explorer, artist, judge and warrior, according to Roger von Oech.

In sum, the insights and inspiration in this book will be valuable for aspiring entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, as well as researchers and teachers of innovation. It clearly shows the value and impact of the access, assemble and apply approach to innovation.

The book is packed with inspiring quotes, and it would be fitting to end this review with the sample below.

YourStory has also published the pocketbook Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).

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Fusion innovation: How 30 innovators crossed boundaries to create business value and social impact - YourStory