Years before James Brandon Lewis gained recognition as certainly one of jazz's strongest and expressive tenor saxophonists, he briefly believed he had found his calling within the church.

After graduating from Howard University in 2006 with a level in jazz studies, Lewis moved to Colorado, where he found lucrative employment within the gospel music scene. The work gave him spiritual achievement, but he felt limited in his creativity and realized he was still trapped within the mundane realities of the music business.

“I was in it because I had a relationship with God, and the only reason I didn't pursue that path was because I didn't see a lot of creative freedom there,” said Lewis, 41, who performs with The Messthetics at Felton Music Hall on Sept. 9 and on the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on Sept. 10.

“I was just playing hymns and I enjoyed it. But at the same time, the gospel music industry is different from Sunday church. It's an industry like any other.”

Eager to spread his wings, Lewis enrolled in a graduate program at Cal Arts Valencia, where he met daring improvisers Charlie Haden and Wadada Leo Smith. He had a knack for networking with experienced masters, absorbing information and jazz knowledge as recent horizons opened up before him.

“When I spent time with Wadada, he talked about systematic music-making and his approach to composition,” Lewis recalled. “I realized that we know the standards, but we can also push the boundaries. There were all these incredible stories that I couldn't find out anywhere else, like talking to Charlie about his first encounter with Ornette Coleman,” the blues-loving alto saxophonist and composer whose rhythmic and harmonic concepts greatly expanded the language of jazz within the late Fifties.

Like a snowball accumulating more mass because it rolls down, Lewis has continued to soak up recent information and experiences while maintaining a sacred core to his sound. Following his George Washington Carver-inspired album Jesup Wagon, which was named one of the best album of the 12 months in a 2021 poll of leading jazz critics, Lewis and his Red Lily Quintet have released the extraordinary double CD For Mahalia, With Love in 2023, a wonderful tribute to gospel singing legend Mahalia Jackson.

Music critics will not be the one attentive listeners who’ve taken note of Lewis' music. Sonny Rollins, the 93-year-old titan of the tenor saxophone whose shadow isn’t any less imposing ten years after his retirement from the stage, has praised Lewis' creative abilities in spiritual terms.

“When I listen to you, I'm listening to Buddha, I'm listening to Confucius,” Rollins said. “I'm listening to the deeper meaning of life. You keep the world in balance.”

Although he keeps in contact with Rollins commonly, the blessing was “totally unexpected,” Lewis said. But he has actively sought out renowned artists known for creating expansive musical worlds, corresponding to bassist/composer William Parker, who leads Lewis' Red Lily Quintet.

Lewis returns to the Bay Area not as a bandleader but as a catalyst in The Messthetics, the Washington, DC-based trio consisting of bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty, the rhythm team of legendary punk band Fugazi, and guitarist Anthony Pirog.

Lewis and Pirog, a musician who can't be categorized and infrequently works in a setting where jazz, rock and recent music collide, met a couple of decade ago at a gig in New York led by drummer William Hooker. They became friends immediately. Pirog toured Europe with Lewis' band “and always made me feel like whatever I wanted to contribute was the best,” Pirog said.

When Lewis signed to the ANTI- label in 2022, he featured The Messthetics on his first single, the blistering track “Fear Not,” and when he sat down with the trio at New York City’s Winter Jazzfest the next 12 months, “he was a perfect fit for the band energetically,” Pirog said.

The collaboration got here into full effect with the discharge of the album “The Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis” in March on Impulse!, a label inextricably linked to musical exploration. As a quartet, the group now covers the whole lot from the crisp funk of “That Thing” to the sublime lyricism of “Boatly.”

“I've always liked the combination of guitar and saxophone, starting with Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall,” said Pirog. “It's also a big theme in surf music.”

Lewis collaborates with one other extraordinary guitarist on September 22 on the SFJAZZ Center as a special guest to have a good time the seventieth birthday of Marc Ribot, best referred to as a palette-expanding muse for artists corresponding to John Zorn, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.

“I'm saying something that everyone knows by now,” Ribot said. “James is one of the greatest saxophonists, if not the greatest tenor player of our time.”

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JAMES BRANDON LEWIS

With the Messthetics: September 9, 8 p.m., Felton Music Hall, Felton; $22-$37; www.feltonmusichall.com; September 10, 8 p.m., Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco; $20; rickshawstop.com

Celebration of Marc Ribot’s seventieth birthday: September 22, 7:00 p.m.; SFJAZZ Center; San Francisco; $25-$95; www.sfjazz.or

There is numerous talk concerning the election of the Vice President and the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris' election by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is not any different.

Known for Attack on Donald Trump and JD Vance as “strange”, Walz, 60, defeated a powerful field of Democratic candidates, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

A moderate democratWalz served as a U.S. Representative from 2007 to 2019 and is taken into account a sexy option for potential independent voters.

Harris' decision comes at an important time within the 2024 US presidential election. Less than three months before the election National polls suggest the race could be very close – and Harris believes her selection of vp will translate into votes within the crucial swing states on Election Day.

The Conversation US has published quite a few articles about vice presidents and whether their election helped or hurt presidential campaigns. Here are a few of them.

1. What do vice presidents actually do?

As a political scientist Joshua Holzer However, there are few references to the office of Vice President within the U.S. Constitution.

These references state that “the Vice President becomes President” when the President becomes incapable of motionand certainly one of its foremost duties is that of President of the US Senate, who may only vote along within the event of a tie.

But as Holzer points out, tied votes within the Senate are rare. Since 1789 only 301 votes for the tie were forged, and 12 vice presidents, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, didn’t forged a single vote. Harris holds the record with 33 decisive votes.

“Aside from staying out of trouble to avoid impeachment and waiting to become or replace the president, vice presidents are really only required to cast an occasional tie-breaking vote in the Senate,” Holzer wrote. “This means that most of the time, vice presidents have no real job.”

John Adams, the first US Vice Presidentwas of an identical opinion. He once complained to his wife that the office of Vice President is “the most insignificant office that man has ever conceived or imagined.”

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Read more: Kamala Harris sets record for many tie-breaking votes in Senate history – a fast have a look at vp duties

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2. Do no harm

As a scholar who studies American politics, Philip Klinkner has examined how political considerations within the collection of a vp have modified over time.

Although there may be little evidence that vice presidential candidates help their electoral results, a foul selection can hurt the election. “Whether Harris played it safe or was bold with her choice, the most important consideration was to do no harm,” Klinkner wrote.

In the case of a foul election, Klinkner explained, the issue shouldn’t be whether the list of candidates is sufficiently balanced or diverse, but moderately whether the candidate has been sufficiently vetted.

“The worst decisions – Tom Eagleton in 1972, Quayle in 1988 and Palin in 2008 – were the result of hasty and ill-conceived selection processes,” Klinkner wrote.

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Read more: The vice presidential election is not any longer nearly where you reside, but in addition about who you’re. What path will Harris take to balance the vote?

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3. Trump’s election

Karin Amira is a political scientist whose research focuses on the connection between Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and conservatism.

Since Trump chosen U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, it has been widely reported that Vance once referred to Trump as “morally reprehensible” And “Cultural heroine,” and he
privately compared him to Hitler.

But the day after Vance won his own Senate election in 2022, he reportedly announced that he would support Trump for president in 2024 and now says that he not readily certified would have won the 2020 election if he had been in Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes.

As Amira identified, Vance doesn’t represent a swing state, nor does he have much appeal to MAGA-skeptical independent voters.

But people near Trump call the 39-year-old Vance the brand new heir to Trump's MAGA movement.

What conclusions could be drawn from Trump’s decision to decide on Vance?

Since 2015, Amira explained, Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, pushing it further away from its stated conservative ideology. “The selection of Vance as Trump's vice presidential running mate – and the contest that preceded it – are the latest steps in that process,” Amira wrote.

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Read more: The collection of JD Vance as Trump's vice presidential candidate marks the top of Republican conservatism

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Editor's note: This story is a summary of articles from The Conversation archives.

Protest movements can look very different depending in your viewpoint, each literally and figuratively.

For protesters, demonstrations are typically the results of careful planning by interest groups and leaders with the goal of spreading a message to a bigger world or to specific institutional targets. However, to outsiders, protests can appear disorganized and disruptive, and it may possibly be difficult to discern the depth of the hassle or its goals.

Take the pro-Palestinian protests which have popped up on campuses across the United States in recent weeks. For the participating students, they’re, within the words of 1 protester, “Raise the voices of Gazans and Palestinians facing genocide.” But for many individuals outside of universities, the main focus was on Conflicts and arrests.

Where does this separation come from? Most people not participate participating in street protests or experiencing the unrest they cause. Rather, they depend on the media to supply an entire picture of the protests.

For over a decade, my research has examined in depth trends in how the media shapes narratives around various kinds of demonstrations. Much of the media's coverage of the campus encampments suits a general pattern of protest coverage that focuses more on the drama of the disruption than on the underlying reasons for it – and that may leave audiences unaware of the nuances of the protests and Movements are informed behind them.

Cover drama over demands

Protests – from small silent sit-ins and mass marches to the present student-led encampments – have similar components.

They require a specific amount of planning, Focus on a perceived injustice And search for reforms or solutions. Protests, by their nature, are disruptive actions of various degrees that involve confrontation with something or someone, and so they employ strategies that attract the eye of the news media and others.

These core elements – grievances, demands, disruption, confrontation and spectacle – are present in just about all protests.

However, for the media, some elements are more newsworthy than others, with confrontation and spectacle often high on the list. Therefore, these elements are likely to be covered more ceaselessly than others.

In research focused on social movements reminiscent of Black Lives Matter, the 2017 Women's March, and others, I even have found this time
and againcoverage tends to make headlines in regards to the parts of the protest which can be sensational and disruptive.

And the political substance of the protests is neglected. The complaints, demands and intentions often remain within the shadows. For example, the evaluation of the In 2020, protests took place following the murder of George Floyd from me and my colleague Rachel Mourão found that Associated Press and cable news headlines focused on unrest and chaos fairly than police violence or protesters' demands.

This pattern is is named a protest paradigm. Although there are numerous aspects that could cause this paradigm to fluctuate, reminiscent of: the timing of stories And the situation of a news organizationMovements that seek to disrupt the established order are probably to receive initial coverage that portrays protesters as criminal, irrelevant, trivial, or illegitimate parts of the political system.

If the media takes notice

This pattern might be seen within the initial coverage of anti-war protests in US universities. These protests began in 2023 and only today expanded to campus camps after months of campaigning.

In the months leading as much as the camps, many students committed to the Israeli campaign in Gaza demanded, amongst other things, that their universities separate from corporations reference to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Brown University students took part in a hunger strike in February. Also in February, a coalition of scholars from several historically black colleges emerged created a joint call to motion for all university systems. Students at my university – Michigan State – gathered support through a web-based petition after which Lobbying at board meetings. When the board of trustees issued a press release rejecting any sort of divestment, the scholars said continued marching to the steps of the headquarters constructing where they continued to protestall before the camp protests were planned.

Compared to late April, when coverage of the organization of student camps at universities increased and university officials began to reply, little of it made it into mainstream news reports. The universities, which called on the police to force the dispersal of the demonstrators, increased the intensity of the confrontation and due to this fact the coverage.

And as a substitute of specializing in the demonstrators' grief – i.e. concerns in regards to the dead, injured, etc impending starvation among the many Palestinians – In reports in regards to the campus encampments, confrontations between protesters and police have grow to be the main focus of reports media coverage.

As with all trends, there are at all times deviations and outliers. Not all reported pieces conform to the protest paradigm. In research Examining the reporting following the killing of George FloydWe have found that when stories in major news outlets deviate from the protest paradigm, it is commonly as a result of work by journalists who’ve engaged deeply and ceaselessly with a community.

In the present protests on campus, student journalism has emerged as an outlier on this regard. Let's take for instance an article from the Indiana Daily Student published throughout the height of the unrest, explaining the lesser-known last-minute administrative policy changes that ultimately confounded the logic of protest planning and contributed to the arrests and temporary bans of college and student protesters.

Who is quoted and who shouldn’t be

There are business the reason why some newsrooms Focus on the spectacle and confrontation – the old journalism adage “If it bleeds, it leads“Many newsroom decisions still prevail. In the primary weeks of the campus protests, this penchant for sensationalism became the main focus of chaos, Clashes And Arrests.

But it’s a call that delegitimizes protest targets.

This delegitimization is facilitated by the sourcing routines that journalists often resort to to inform stories quickly and simply without legal consequences. In current news situations, journalists are likely to deal with and directly quote high-status sources reminiscent of government and university officials. This is because reporters may have already got a longtime relationship with such officials, who often have dedicated media relations teams. And especially during campus protests, reporters have done it had difficulty making direct contact with protest participants.

As a result, official narratives could dominate reporting. So when officials just like the governor of Texas Greg Abbott equates protesters with criminals with anti-Semitic intentionsthat normally is roofed – definitely greater than any rebuttal from protest participants.

And since readers and viewers are unlikely to be there to evaluate Abbott's characterization of protesters for themselves, coverage can influence how a protest movement and the politics surrounding it are understood.

The media shapes the best way most individuals understand it. But as university coverage of the protests has shown, the main focus is commonly on the spectacle fairly than the substance.