9. November and December, 1955, Paris

By Raphael Rubinstein

JUNE 2022 | The Miraculous

A German composer, who was deported from the United States seven years earlier for being, as one right-wing politician put it, “the Karl Marx of music,” is hired by a French director to score a documentary film about the Holocaust. From Paris, he writes home to his wife in East Berlin: “The film is grandiose, horrible, showing monstrous crimes...regrettably, the film people here are putting me under pressure to finish the whole thing in ten days even though the film is barely finished.

Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s The Gravedigger’s Wife

By Farah Abdessamad

APRIL 2022 | Film

Beyond ethnic and racial representation on screens, failure to acknowledge critically appraised films raises the issues of dominant narratives in creative industries. Overlooking The Gravedigger’s Wife is yet another missed opportunity for the Oscars, which could have made history by offering a stage to new, crucial voices.

2. Los Angeles, 1969

By Raphael Rubinstein

MAY 2022 | The Miraculous

Born in New Orleans to a Baptist minister and his wife, this woman has been singing professionally since the age of 14. Now living in L.A. and well into a pregnancy, she gets a call one night from a producer friend who is desperately in need of a backup singer for a recording session with some visiting English musicians. At first, she refuses—it’s almost midnight, she’s pregnant, and already in bed—but at last she agrees and a car is dispatched to pick her up.

6. 1955, Los Angeles

By Raphael Rubinstein

JUNE 2022 | The Miraculous

A Spanish-language parody of the TV theme “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” becomes an unexpected hit, especially in a subsequent English version that sells some 500,000 copies. This is a departure for the musician who a few years earlier had provided the soundtrack for the Pachuco subculture with recordings like “Marihuana Boogie” and “El Pachuco.”