FUNKY SHOW ON ST. NICHOLAS. In 1971, Melvin Van Peebles laid groundwork for the blaxploitation film craze with his violent and sexually explicit Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song, rated X and dedicated to "Brothers and sisters who have had enough of the Man." Could he have guessed that decades later (on October 24, actually) he would receive the DaimlerChrysler "Behind the Lens Award"?

A musician as well as a filmmaker, Peebles also created musicals that were produced on Broadway and nominated for Tony Awards. One of them, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death: Tunes from Blackness (1971), is a set of musicalized poetic vignettes about characters including beggars, a pimp, a transvestite, a death-row inmate, and a Black Muslim. Sure, the work deals in stereotypes--but ingeniously. Van Peebles won a Grammy and a Drama Desk Award for his work.

Ain't Supposed to Die... is scheduled to wrap up a very rare revival at The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Inc.
on Sunday, November 21. Catch it if you can--especially if you have a jones for gospel-funk music. (The closest musical parallel that comes to mind is the album Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed, featuring Reed and Taj Mahal.)

Reserve your tickets--it's playing to packed houses. If you get there by taking the A train to 145th Street and heading south, be sure to check out the view of the tower to the southwest. It looked marvelous Wednesday night under the crescent moon.

Here's a rave Village Voice review by David Finkle. And here's some trivia: Garrett Morris was in the original Broadway cast of the show.